Mercedes' Toto Wolff has dismissed as "complete nonsense" claims by Bernie Ecclestone that the German manufacturer had helped rival Ferrari with its engine efforts.
In an interview with Italy's La Repubblica, the 87-year-old former F1 supremo opened a can of worms, claiming that the FIA and indeed rival teams had helped the Scuderia achieve success.
Ecclestone suggested that Mercedes had perhaps supplied technology to its arch rival to help it with its efforts to produce a competitive power unit in the hybrid era in order to provide itself with a credible rival to beat.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner called it "the usual Bernie thinking".
"It's very clear that there's a very tight relationship between Ferrari and Mercedes," he said.
"The way they operate in meetings, one won't lift the hand without the other one being in agreement these days.
"As for whether one has one has helped the other, I'd be surprised," added Horner.
Wolff, though, called the comments a usual Ecclestone-brand "hand grenade".
"Bernie is the only person who can throw a hand grenade from the other side of the world which lands in the paddock and explodes. I love his stories!" he said.
"I miss him stirring up meetings in this way but of course it's completely nonsense," the Mercedes team boss told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
Renault's Cyril Abiteboul also doubted the veracity of the claims.
"I think there has been a lot of speculation about that, but I think it is not a new story – it is an old story and I don’t think there is any leg [to it]," he said.
"When you look at every single thing that Mercedes is doing, I don’t see Mercedes doing that and in the world in which we are living, it is very difficult to keep a secret.
"We’ve seen, when there was a possible collaboration between Mercedes and Honda, it took a couple of days for everyone in the paddock to become aware of that.
"I would be surprised, and if it happened then they would have been super good at keeping a secret."
McLaren's Eric Boullier offered a different perspective, and suggested that perhaps something had been lost in translation with regard to Ecclestone's comments.
"I can’t comment on a translated interview from Bernie in Italian. It’s his opinion, he’s got his one,” he said. “I think what he’s referring to, it’s the same as for the teams.
"When you sometimes poach somebody from another team – we all have heard of a few engineers leaving Mercedes to go to Ferrari a couple of years ago. That’s what I think he was referring to."
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