I’ve heard on the grapevine that a disenchanted and disappointed Fernando Alonso is prepared to risk widespread derision by forcing his Ferrari team bosses to officially protest Sebastian Vettel’s world title win.

Talk about sour grapes. It all smacks of desperation in what would be the cruellest payback for a champion who, in a wounded car, drove the race of his life against all the odds, nearly sabotaged by crashes and technical setbacks, from dead last to a championship clinching sixth place.

How would Ferrari feel if it were the other way around and Red Bull had lost out and found an offence of trivia, maybe enforced in the heat of the moment when even a racing driver’s superb reflexes cannot cope, and without illicit intent, and registered a complaint to the FIA, the sports rule makers?

The very ethos of sportsmanship and acceptance of defeat with dignity and grace is likely to be pushed to the limits if Ferrari do go ahead at Alonso’s insistence that Vettel overtook Jean-Eric Vergne’s Torro Rosso under a yellow warning light.

Back at Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters in Italy, the hierarchy have been studying footage of the alleged incident in last Sunday’s Brazil Grand Prix. I understand, however, that Gary Connolly, one of the four stewards on duty, disputes Spaniard Alonso’s assertion and there is no word yet, officially, that Ferrari have protested or that the FIA have received any notification and the time limit for any such action expires sometime today.

If brilliant wonderboy Vettel, the youngest ever three-time champion were to be found guilty of this minor fault in the frantic heat of a chase for the crown, he could be hit with a 20-second penalty. That would demote him to eighth place and hand the title, a third one to go with his 2005/06 double, to Alonso by one point.

I just hope that Ferrari and Alonso do not sour what has been a truly and historically memorable Grand Prix chase for glory by sulkily following through with the insistence that the 25-year-old German cheated to become champion. For Alonso to be handed the title under such circumstances would be an absolute travesty of Formula One justice and render all concerned a laughing stock.

Except ,of course, to Vettel — a thoroughly deserving champion for all that has gone before.