McLaren boss Dennis denies any involvement in Mosley affair

McLaren boss Ron Dennis has denied any involvement in bringing to light a sex scandal that threatens Max Mosley's position as head of Formula One's governing body.

"As I have consistently said whenever I have been asked about this, I categorically deny that I have anything to do with the News of the World investigation into Mr Mosley," Dennis said in a statement yesterday.

"Neither does anyone connected with the McLaren Group or the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team. And neither does any agent or any other party acting on my behalf or anyone connected with the McLaren Group or the... team."

Britain's News of the World Sunday tabloid published details and photographs last month of Mosley's participation in what it said was a Nazi-style sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes.

Mosley, who is suing the newspaper for unlimited damages for breach of privacy while also fighting to keep his position as International Automobile Federation (FIA) president, has presented himself as the victim of a deliberate attempt to discredit him.

"From information provided to me by an impeccable high-level source close to the UK police and security services, I understand that over the last two weeks or so, a covert investigation of my private life and background has been undertaken by a group specialising in such things, for reasons and clients unknown," Mosley wrote to FIA members this month.

"I have had similar and less well-sourced information from France."

Mosley has since hired the Quest private investigations company, run by former London Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens, to try and find out how the newspaper obtained their story.

Dennis's response came after Radovan Novak, the general secretary of the Czech Automobile Association and a long-standing ally of Mosley, appeared to suggest in a Prague radio interview that the revelations might be linked to last year's Formula One spying controversy.

The FIA fined McLaren a record $100 million and stripped them of all their constructors' points for having Ferrari technical information in their possession.

Dennis, who has clashed many times with Mosley in his decades in Formula One, said McLaren would be seeking clarification from Novak.

"We are writing to Mr Novak and are currently considering the appropriate route via which the remarks that have been attributed to him may be withdrawn or corrected," he said.

Mosley, in office since 1993, has ignored calls for him to resign over the scandal but faces a confidence vote by a secret ballot of the FIA's general assembly in Paris next month.

The Briton, whose late father Oswald founded the pre-World War Two British Union of Fascists, has denied any Nazi connotations to the sex scandal.

The News of the World has said it stands by the story.