Red Bull stops removing McLaren tape

What happened

Red Bull will no longer try to remove the tape McLaren put on the pit wall near Lando Norris on the grid. The two teams have agreed on this. That petty competition on the grid had to stop.

Red Bull was previously fined €50,000, half of which was conditional. The sanction followed after a team member ignored instructions from pit marshals and violated rules about leaving the grid. That employee tried to walk back through an opening in the pitlane to disrupt the tape.

Why McLaren is using the tape

McLaren sticks the tape as an additional guideline for Norris to put exactly in his grid box. The tape is not a primary reference. Usually Norris uses the yellow line on the tarmac. The tape is a back-up if that line is hard to see.

How McLaren made it difficult

The change of action between the two teams' mechanics grew into a little cat-and-mouse game. McLaren deliberately made it difficult for Red Bull to remove the tape.

• The tape was sometimes cut into long vertical strips, so you couldn't pull it all off at once.
• There was sometimes a mechanic for the tape on the grid until the last minute.
• Sometimes they stuck two layers of tape. The second layer had a playful text on it to make it extra tricky.

Conversations and possible consequences

Team chiefs Andrea Stella and Laurent Mekies spoke this week. They wanted closure before it escalates. Nobody wants the rivalry between McLaren and Red Bull to become a distraction as the championship approaches.

In the United States, the tape act led to rules being broken. In a worst-case scenario, that could have delayed the start of the race. Therefore, both sides thought it wise to draw a line under it.

Norris on the situation

Lando Norris found it extra funny that Red Bull got into trouble. He said he didn't even use the tape that weekend. They stuck the tape ‘just in case’ and he didn't need it. He also said that McLaren had faced attempts to unstick the tape before, for example at Monza. Sometimes he uses the tape, sometimes not. He expects McLaren to continue with it as a back-up, even if it is not usually needed.