Ferrari team principal, Mattia Binotto, was seen leaving Mercedes’ hospitality suite with their boss, Toto Wolff, during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
Red Bull have this week been implicated in reports that suggest they overspent last season, along with Aston Martin.
The Austrian side got back into title contention last year, and Max Verstappen’s 10 wins for the season were enough to earn him his maiden world title.
He sealed the deal in controversial circumstances at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix back in December, and the blowback from the infamous Safety Car restart that day has been felt ever since.
READ: Toto Wolff puts Christian Horner on blast over financial breach
There is now even more cause for Mercedes fans to demand that last year’s championship be reversed in Sir Lewis Hamilton’s favour, after an alleged breach of the financial regulations.
The teams were given a limit of $145 million that they could spend on the cars last year, and going over that limit can be split into two categories.
The first is a minor overspend, in which a team exceeds the cost cap by less than five percent, and a material overspend entails an expenditure of anything more than five percent over the limit.
The teams gave their paperwork to the FIA for last season earlier this year, although Williams were late in submitting theirs, so they were fined for a procedural breach.
Wolff claimed on Friday that Red Bull have been under investigation for months, but Christian Horner has labelled any allegations against his team “fictitious” and “unacceptable.”
One of the punishments for a material overspend is an exclusion from the season in question, although Mercedes do not believe it will get that far.
READ: Christian Horner lashes out at Ferrari and Mercedes over ‘inflammatory’ accusations
Binotto and Wolff were seen in the Mercedes area shaking hands and, presumably, discussing their next steps.
The Scuderia will be interested in the debate, because an overspend one season can have a knock-on effect going into future campaigns.
The FIA are still reviewing everyone’s documents, and there is as yet no evidence of any breach of financial regulations last year.