McLaren is accusing Red Bull that the latter sent illegal coded radio messages to Daniel Ricciardo during the Singapore Grand Prix last Monday. Red Bull has vehemently denied the claims saying that there was a real issue with the battery of their car.

“I think their message was coded, but it is up to the FIA to investigate. It is not up to me,” Eric Boullier, the McLaren’s team chief, said via The Independent. “It was a strange message. Once was OK, but twice? Three times? You can doubt what the car problem was.”

Bouillier’s main contention was that Red Bull disguised driver-performance-related calls to Ricciardo and passed it on as legal technical messages.

This is the first allegations after the FIA approved new radio regulations before the race in Singapore.

“The problem started relatively early, probably before half distance, when Daniel had basically an issue with the battery that was not discharging,” Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal countered in the same article.

Ricciardo also admitted in the post-race press conference that there were legit power issues during the race.

“We had quite a bit going on during the race so yeah, power was coming and going and from the safety car onwards it was pretty consistently down on power and basically, coming up through gears,” Ricciardo stated via the F1 official website during the post-race press conference.

“I would get a bit of power and then it would drop and then it would come again. So we definitely had a few issues and we tried fixing them but to be honest we didn’t quite clear it all up.”

Ricciardo finished 3rd in the Singapore race, which was won by Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes. Sebastian Vettel, also of Red Bull, ended up in 2nd place.

With five races to go in the F1 season, Hamilton is still atop the driver’s rankings with 241 points but just three points ahead of Nico Rosberg (238 points). Ricciardo is at third place with 181 points.