Christian Horner scoffed at Mercedes' suggestion that Red Bull "downgraded" their cars by mistake.
It is true that the last month has not been smooth for Red Bull, who have become so accustomed to having things their own way over the last couple of years. Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen in Miami and suddenly they had challengers again.
In Imola, Verstappen won but only be less than a second from McLaren star Norris. Red Bull introduced an upgrade to their cars that weekend but it didn't immediately put them back to being a step ahead of the competition again.
Since, the defending champions have floundered in Monaco and got back to winning ways again in Canada on Sunday. But, again, it was a hard-fought race and Verstappen did not have the margin he could rely on just a few weeks ago.
The fact Red Bull have found things more difficult in recent weeks led to Mercedes technical director James Allison questioning the success of those upgrades. He said: "I guess as soon as there's a decent range of cornering speeds, they'll be useful again, but it does look as if their upgrade was a downgrade. So, fingers crossed that would really mess them up.
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"That makes life hard, because the moment you stop trusting your tools, you have to backtrack, and you lose loads of time. Time is your biggest friend, losing it is your worst enemy... Everyone always loves other people's misery in this game."
Red Bull team adviser Helmut Marko had previously admitted a lack of correlation between what the simulator said their upgrades would do and what actually happened on track. Regardless, team principal Horner insists there are no problems with their new parts.
Mercedes technical director James Allison questioned Red Bull's most recent upgrades (Getty Images)Quizzed on the subject, he replied: "No, absolutely not. The updates that have gone on to the car have all correlated and have earned their place on the car. There are quite often rumours that percolate. There are a lot of cars that look like ours now, they've all converged. And I think that's healthy competition.
"We've got to be at the top of our game, to keep ahead and so everybody in the team... what we achieved last year was unnatural, it was always going to converge, it was always going to become more competitive. And I think every member of our team is acutely aware of that and working very hard to try and make sure that we stay ahead of the rest.
"We're still learning about the car obviously. You can see that there's been convergence, Ferrari and McLaren they’ve all made progress and Mercedes as well are looking quick here this weekend. We've got some issues that we know that we need to work on, that there are some tracks that have really suited us... so there's still plenty of work to do."
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