Nov.15 (GMM) David Coulthard has slammed suggestions his former team McLaren might have artificially slowed down Jenson Button in Abu Dhabi to help Lewis Hamilton recover his lost form.

Hamilton has lost the points battle with his teammate Button this season, but he at least returned to the top step of the podium on Sunday by finishing ahead of Fernando Alonso.

It notably buoyed the 2008 world champion's spirits, after his running feud with Felipe Massa and his split with girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger saw him worryingly downbeat at recent races.

But the Abu Dhabi win for Hamilton followed an almost race-long KERS problem for Button in the sister car, which in the presence of Ron Dennis in Abu Dhabi caught the attention of F1's rumour-mongers.

"I heard some ludicrous suggestions on Monday that McLaren might have deliberately caused his (Button's) KERS issues on Sunday to allow Lewis some breathing space," Coulthard wrote in his latest Telegraph column.

"Some even linked this theory to the presence of Ron Dennis in the McLaren motor home for the first time in a while. Nonsense," said Coulthard, the Red Bull consultant who raced under Dennis at McLaren for almost a decade.

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