Motorsport boss Toto Wolff issued a strong rebuttal to the suggestion that Mercedes had influenced a small but significant change to the tyres at the Spanish Grand Prix.
After struggling with severe blistering on the softer compounds during pre-season testing at the same circuit, Pirelli decided each tyre would carry a thinner tread for the race this weekend.
The main reason for this was deemed the new surface at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, therefore the two other races this season held at newly re-tarmacked tracks, Silverstone and Paul Ricard in France, will also see these thinner tyres used.
Mercedes were thought to be the big beneficiaries and the main driver behind the change after struggling with the most blisters in testing and have had problems managing the tyre temperatures at the last three races.
After Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas stormed to the team's first front row lockout of 2018 in qualifying on Saturday, those suspicions were only heightened.
"Is bollocks a bad word in English?" Wolff said to Autosport when asked to comment. "Rubbish. All teams had blistering, very heavy blistering at the test in Barcelona.
"Red Bull, Ferrari, ourselves. McLaren have seen it I think also. The tyres wouldn't have lasted in the race.
"The ambient and track temperatures [in testing] were arctic, Baltic, and for that reason, Pirelli changed the thickness of the tyre to prevent blistering.
"I don't know where suddenly this rumour comes out that we have been influencing Pirelli and the FIA to change any tyres," he added.
What has been clear throughout the weekend, however, is the problems from the winter and recent races have not been at all prevalent in Spain, but the Austrian puts that down to hard work and the ethos of the team.
"When we haven't performed well in the past we have taken ourselves by the nose and have looked for performance to be found on our car, not go on the default mode, turn around and say 'what are the others doing that is wrong?'" he said.
"We also seem to be competitive when the ambient is a bit cooler and the track temperature is a bit cooler. That is a pattern that we had in the last years also.
"I don't think we've made a step change that suddenly the car is transformed - we just had the car and the tyres in the right window today."
Sebastian Vettel was far from convinced by that explanation, however.
"I think it's pretty straightforward, the tyres are different. They're different for everyone so everyone needs to cope with that," he was quoted by ESPN.
"I think it was exceptional that Mercedes was struggling in the last events as much as they were but thinner thread, basically the tyres are harder so we still have the same tyres if you look at the colours but they're harder than they're used to be. As I said, it's the same for all of us."