Mercedes chairman Niki Lauda has labelled suggestions that his team is favouring Nico Rosberg over Lewis Hamilton as "bulls---".
Poor starts at the first two races and MGU-H issues at the last two rounds have prevented Hamilton showing his full potential so far this season. Meanwhile, Rosberg has scored four straight victories, resulting in suggestions on social media of a conspiracy at Mercedes.
"That is bulls---," Lauda told Sky Sports. "I hate this talk.
"There are 1,100 people and they all try to do their best for both cars, otherwise we would never have gotten here. These mistakes we don't do on purpose. They are simple human mistakes that everyone can do and we have to take all the consequences to make sure it will not happen again, and that is what we are going to do."
Hamilton also suffered a loss of water pressure during the Russian Grand Prix, forcing him to back off just as he was starting to close on Rosberg. But Lauda said the double MGU-H issues were of more concern.
"These things can happen when you change the engine. It should not happen, but it can happen. More worrying is that Lewis needed to change the engine and that it [the problem] repeated itself. We changed all the parts associated to it and it came back, so we have to look somewhere else."