Australia's last Formula 1 world champion Alan Jones has rubbished the notion of preferential treatment at McLaren against their driver, Oscar Piastri, arguing that the idea crops up every season with any title challengers in the same team.
Currently, McLaren have both their drivers fighting for the championship while Red Bull's Max Verstappen is close behind.
Many have argued that Piastri's sudden decline in performance is due to team sabotage, but Jones called the idea the "greatest load of nonsense."
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"It's the greatest load of nonsense of all time," said Jones on the ABC Summer Grandstand podcast.
"Every single season, we come across this bullshit.
"It's either Mark Webber against Vettel, or it's somebody, it's always, 'Oh, he's got a better car than me' or 'He's getting preferential treatment'.
"It's absolute crap."
A long history of teammate fights
During his time as an F1 driver, Jones was regularly locked in tense fights with his teammate Carlos Reutemann.
But Jones argued that teams would be silly to fly "halfway around the world" to be preferential to one driver and lose out on the maximum points they could achieve.
"These teams don't spend absolute fortunes travelling halfway around the world to stymie one car or give preference to the other," he added.
"I can assure you that both these cars are getting the same sort of treatment.
"I know Zak Brown very well. He's a good racer, and he'd be giving both these blokes equal chances.
"I had Carlos Reutemann, an Argentinian, as my teammate, and the crap that used to come through that Williams was giving me better equipment, a better car, that they weren't looking after Carlos the way they should.
"Of course, Argentinians being a little bit fiery as they are, that was sort of exaggerated even more.
"People get carried away, and half of those who get carried away have no idea about the sport whatsoever."
He reiterated the outlandish ideas of teams handing drivers damaged cars or changing the setup to help a particular driver.
"If it were tennis, I swear to god, they'd be saying they're giving the bloke the wrong racket or something. It's just rubbish," he said.
"Then you get all the rare experts coming out of the woodwork. With their opinions on this, that and the other thing. Half of them wouldn't know one end of a car from another.
"But they're free to give their advice whether it's needed or not. It's just nonsense.
"It's not [happening], certainly within the team, I can assure you."
Claire Williams, the daughter of Frank Williams, team principal to Jones at Williams Racing, agreed with the sentiment that there is no ill will inside the McLaren garage.
She reminded those that disagree that racing is a "crazy business" and that decisions by race engineers on the pit wall are made in a split-second to best suit every driver on track.
"You're going to have best-laid plans going into every grand prix. You're going to have the conversations with your drivers to keep it clean, keep it on the race track," Williams explained.
"But, you know, racing is a bit of a crazy business. You don't know what's going to happen when the lights go out.
"It's not easy to manage and we can all look on a Monday and go 'why did they make that decision, why did they do that?'
"But all I can say is McLaren on the pit wall will always have the best intentions and try to do the best thing for their drivers on a Sunday afternoon."
Las Vegas looming
Coming into Las Vegas, Piastri is trailing behind his teammate in the standings by 24 points.
Lando Norris could effectively clinch the drivers' title by placing at least second in the next three weekends, but Jones thinks that the pendulum could swing either way.
"Norris could have a DNF, Oscar win and end up back in the lead again," Jones insisted.
But not all in the paddock agree.
Guenther Steiner, former F1 boss at Haas believes that Verstappen is set to leapfrog a "mentally destroyed" Piastri in the drivers' championship. Currently only 25 points separate the two.
"You guys saw what happened in Brazil, or not in Brazil, the last four races. So, why not?" Steiner asked on the Red Flags podcast.
"I mean, he [Verstappen] continues to do it.
"If you say that Oscar is now destroyed mentally, I mean, Max will be ahead of him, absolutely. And Max is motivated like hell.
"As we can see in Brazil, he didn't give up after a crappy qualifying. He rolled his sleeves up and made it better, and finished on the podium."
Steiner brought up the discussion of Piastri's future, saying his opinions have changed and that the young Australian would benefit from leaving McLaren if he doesn't win the championship.
"I think if that is happening, he just needs to regroup over the winter and come back stronger than before," Steiner said.
"Otherwise, if he doesn't come back stronger, I think the best is that he changes teams then. That's my opinion about it."
The Las Vegas race on Sunday will be at 3pm, November 23 (AEDT).
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