To Ferrari, Fernando Alonso's victory in the German grand prix last Sunday was a well-deserved triumph and anyone who thought otherwise was ill-informed or had a grudge. There have been a lot of those people about in the aftermath of the race at Hockenheim and, here in Budapest, the events in Germany will not be buried, much to Ferrari's annoyance.

The fallout from the instruction to Felipe Massa to let Alonso past to win the race last weekend has hung over the circuit since the bulk of the teams' entourage arrived in Budapest on Tuesday. Little else has been talked about around the track this week. The atmosphere around Massa's team has been awkward at best as Ferrari have reacted defensively to the spotlight being turned upon them. They want to move on. Unfortunately, no one else is ready to do the same.

When the drivers joined their teams the following day, Alonso marched past a bank of photographers, stopping only to shake hands with a favoured few and he has done his best all week to avoid questions on the issue. Ferrari's thinking at the last round was to get Alonso back into title contention after just one podium finish in the previous five races, and everyone in the team, including the Spaniard, have been at pains to point out that Massa is not now the No2 driver at Ferrari.

"It is not No1 or No2 drivers," said Alonso, in a brief appearance in front of the press. "It is more about respect for each other and respect for racing for the scuderia, which means a lot. We all said everything in Germany and that is it. Our main focus is concentrate on this race.

"There is nothing really to say about any opinions. Many things have been said in the last couple of days. The only thing for us is that the car is competitive and we can do well here. What is the opinion of some of the drivers or team principals is up to them. We respect everything but we concentrate on our job."

When pressed about his relationship with Massa, Alonso kept up the deadpan persona that has been evident since he took off his helmet at Hockenheim after the victory put him 34 points off the leader Lewis Hamilton in the drivers championship. "We are both drivers who want to win, we are both competitive and we want to score as many points as possible," insisted the 29-year-old. "We are team‑mates but we do fight because we have the same car. What we make different at Ferrari is that we do not touch and we work together very well."

Most of the opinions aired since Hockenheim have been critical of Ferrari's tactics in Germany and the team has reacted by simply batting the accusations away. Earlier in the week the Ferrari president, Luca di Montezemolo, had issued a statement on Ferrari's official website that was aimed at the team's critics. "With all the comments made recently, most of them misguided, there is only clear and concrete truth: Ferrari is strong and winning again," he said. "That is what I, everyone in the company and our fans wanted.

"Everyone at Ferrari was naturally delighted with the fantastic one-two finish in the German grand prix, which proved that the car had improved considerably over the past few races, even if the results had been lacking.

"While the quickest car outright in qualifying was still a blue Red Bull, the next two cars on the grid were both red and, in race conditions, it seemed that the Cavallino [the prancing horse on Ferrari's team badge] was quicker than the Bull."

That Ferrari deserved to win the race has never been in doubt, it is just that to many the wrong car won. The way that Massa was instructed to move aside and let his team-mate past on the 49th lap of the race with a clumsily coded message – "Fernando is faster than you" – is against the rules, as the stewards made clear when they handed the Italian team a $100,000 (£65,000) fine and referred the matter to the World Motor Sport Council. But the feeling remains at Ferrari that they did nothing wrong at Hockenheim despite not appealing the fine.

"Enough of the hypocrisy. This has always happened," said Di Montezemolo, who was sporting director of Ferrari in the 1970s. "If one races for Ferrari, then the interests of the team come before those of the individual."

That is certainly true. At the 1956 Italian grand prix, the British driver Peter Collins was forced to hand his car over to Juan Manuel Fangio during the race. The Argentinian went on to finish second, clinching his fourth world title in his only season in Maranello. Twenty-three years later, also at Monza, Gilles Villeneuve obediently followed Jody Scheckter across the line to give his team-mate the title. Villeneuve later admitted that he was praying for the South African's Ferrari to break as every lap passed but he had agreed not to challenge for the lead.

Team orders and the concept of No1 and No2 drivers were widely accepted in Formula One until 2002, when Ferrari took them to extremes. When Jean Todt, now the president of the FIA, instructed Rubens Barrichello to allow Michael Schumacher to overtake him yards from the line at the Austrian grand prix, he made it quite clear that the team only favoured one driver and he had won four of the first five races that season. Schumacher was not fighting for a championship, as Alonso now clearly is, that day as he already had it in the bag.

The current Ferrari team principal, Stefano Domenicali, has clearly been exasperated by the endless questioning over the team-orders scandal and today he tried to put the matter to bed until the World Motor Sport Council meets to discuss the issue at the beginning of September. "There is not a problem with first and second drivers," Domenicali said. "We consider the team as a general interest and we consider Formula One as a team sport."

That seems to be the crux of the matter. Scuderia Ferrari, the oldest and most revered team in grand prix racing, have a philosophy that is against the current rules of the sport.