The Formula One battle between McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari is still raging on as the Italian team responded on Friday to earlier allegations.

On Wednesday in an open letter send to Italian Automobile club head Luigi Macaluso Ron Dennis revealed that Ferrari has used using an illegal device when they won the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in March.

In response Ferrari issued a statement in which they said that allegations made by McLaren were "serious and false".

"Contrary to the statement put forward by McLaren Ferrari never illegally gained any advantage. The two cars used in the Australian Grand Prix were deemed by the stewards to be in conformity with the technical regulations before, during and at the end of the event. If there had been any illegalities, they would have been disqualified.” the statement reads.

"In fact, what the FIA did next is commonplace. The FIA took the opportunity to issue a clarification on the interpretation of the regulation and then asked the teams concerned to make the necessary modifications. There are actually numerous examples of this in both the recent and distant past which have also involved other teams.", Ferrari added.

The scandal between two teams ignited after it was discovered that former McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan received classified material from former Ferrari head of performance Nigel Stepney.

McLaren-Mercedes insisted that the team didn’t know about the material received by Coughlan and the FIA decided to not sanction the team.

"However, there is insufficient evidence that this information was used in such a way as to interfere improperly with the FIA Formula One World Championship. We therefore impose no penalty," the FIA said last week in a statement after a meeting of its World Motor Sport Council.