Ferrari's chief opponents in this year's fight for the Formula One drivers' world championship said they had no serious objections to the Italians' pragmatic decision to conjure up a deliberate gearbox penalty for Felipe Massa ahead of Sunday's United States Grand Prix.

Briton Lewis Hamilton won the race for McLaren ahead of defending champion and current series leader German Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull with Spaniard Fernando Alonso finishing third for Ferrari, thanks largely to starting from seventh on the grid after qualifying ninth.

His promotion was due to the five-place grid penalties given to both Frenchman Romain Grosjean of Lotus and, on Sunday morning, Brazilian Massa for gearbox irregularities - in the latter's case a deliberate breaking of his gearbox seal to incur a penalty.

But as many paddock observers argued about the ethics of the Ferrari decision which was fiercely defended by the team, both Red Bull and McLaren avoided any direct criticism of the Italian's strategy.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: "It is within the regulations, and it was a tactical move. They obviously made that decision to get Fernando on to the right hand side of the grid and it worked well for them.

"It was within the rules, and while it was hard on Felipe, their priority is Fernando."

When asked if Red Bull considered doing something similar for Australian Mark Webber, which would have put Alonso back on to the dirty side of the grid, Horner replied: "Well then someone else would do it, and before you know it Fernando would start on the front row. We never considered it."

The Maranello-based outfit was concerned about having Alonso start on the dirty left side of the grid for the race.

Its decision enabled the switch of Alonso to the clean side and cruise round the outside of the field at the start to take fourth place in the first corner.

His podium finish finally kept alive his dream of a third drivers title and took the championship down to the wire in Brazil this weekend (November 25) when he has to overhaul a 13-points deficit.

The strategic move led to some questions about sporting ethics, but their main rivals were unruffled.

McLaren team chief Martin Whitmarsh said that Ferrari's tactic was exactly the kind of policy that his outfit was reluctant to use - and which was the cause of Alonso's displeasure during their ill-fated 2007 season together. But he declined to attack Ferrari for its tactics.

"Teams and team principals can decide how they run their programs. It was tough, but it is very clear that they are very focused on Fernando. It worked, as it worked for Fernando, and unless we forget, Fernando was with us - and it was not doing those things that meant that Fernando left us, " he said.

"I am not criticizing anyone. I think we have to go racing as we see a good way to go racing."

He added: "I think the toughest thing is that it put a number of people onto the slow side of the grid. It didn't impact on us - we were on the slow side of the grid and we stayed on it. But if I had qualified on to the right side of the grid and that had put me on to the slow side I would have been very pissed off."

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