Toto Wolff has put a straight face to growing whispers about the intensifying technical ’synergy’ between Red Bull’s two Formula 1 teams.
A decision was made during the course of the season to ramp up the legal transfer of additional components from the energy drink company’s main team to Alpha Tauri.
Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner, however, denied that F1 now has its next ’pink Mercedes’-like situation - a reference to the Mercedes-like Racing Point car of 2020.
But there is no doubt about the increased flow of parts to Alpha Tauri in 2023, with Auto Motor und Sport insisting it was the "largest upgrade workload of all the teams" this year.
"In 18 of the 22 races," claimed correspondent Michael Schmidt, "new parts were added to the car with a total of 65 detail changes, including "six new floors alone".
"They clearly have more downforce than us now," Williams boss James Vowles was quoted as saying.
He says Williams ultimately gave up trying to keep up with Alpha Tauri towards the end of the season because "If we had tried, we might have won today but lost out tomorrow".
So is key Red Bull rival Mercedes worried about the stronger-than-before technical relationship between Red Bull Racing and Alpha Tauri?
"I have to be honest," said team boss Wolff, "I only saw that (Yuki) Tsunoda was sixth in qualifying in Abu Dhabi, which makes me happy for the Alpha Tauri fans to end the season on a high."
He told international media he is not overly concerned.
"This is a transparent world," said the Austrian. "I haven’t looked at any of the parts yet but I’m sure others will. But to be honest, I haven’t thought about it much."