McLaren’s ‘tea tray’ complaints show F1 row is brewing in title fight

Fans can be forgiven for switching off when Formula One descends into one of its arcane rows over technical regulations, as happened in the build-up to this weekend’s US Grand Prix, with accusation and counter-accusation over the innocuous sounding element known as the “bib” or, with even moreinnocence, the “tea tray”.

Yet these forays into sniping over the rules, much as they do not stir the sporting soul, do matter. Especially in a tightly contested championship battle as this season has now become. The tiniest margin might make a difference and the two teams locked in battle, McLaren and Red Bull, know it. Bibtray-gate illustrates how the title protagonists are leveraging anything they can for an advantage, while Red Bull’s Christian Horner and McLaren’s Zak Brown, are rekindling what is already a rather healthy antagonism.

Related: Six F1 races to go: the factors that will decide if Verstappen or Norris wins title

The stakes are high for both teams after a rather uninspiring start to the season. When Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won seven of the first 10 races, the Dutchman appeared to have it done and dusted, a question of when, not if. However after McLaren delivered an extraordinarily effective upgrade in Miami their British driver, Lando Norris, came charging back into the title fight.

Verstappen still holds all the cards but Norris is very much in the game for a decisive, head-to-head season run-in across races this weekend, then Mexico, Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. McLaren in turn, now lead Red Bull in the constructors’ championship, a title the team have not won since 1998 and prize more than any other.

Norris went into this meeting in Austin trailing Verstappen by 52 points and needs to outscore him by just under nine in the six remaining to take the title. It’s a big ask but, with McLaren in the best form heading into the second half of the season, one that is feasible. Into which high-tension and intensely competitive atmosphere, perhaps unsurprisingly, arrived this week’s controversy.

Before any running began on Friday the FIA confirmed it was looking into complaints that Red Bull may have been gaining an advantage by using a device that allowed them to adjust the bib, also known as the tea tray – the front of the floor of the car – after qualifying to achieve a better race setup, when regulations forbid changes to the car under conditions.

That they had the device to do so was clear from open-source documents teams submit to the FIA and Red Bull responded by confirming the device did exist, but buried in the innards of the cockpit such that it was “inaccessible once the car is fully assembled”. They came to an agreement with the FIA to make changes to the car by the Brazilian GP and, in the interim, the FIA will put a seal on any adjustment control, to ensure it has not been changed post-qualifying.

Not good enough, was Brown’s response. “If you breach parc fermé rules that is a massive breach and there should be consequences if that has happened,” he said. “What doesn’t quite stack up is a comment that you can’t modify it. Well, then why does the FIA feel they need to put a seal on it if it’s not accessible post or during parc fermé?”

Horner, never one to back down from a scrap, responded pointedly. “The FIA are satisfied but [it is sealed] to satisfy a bit of paranoia elsewhere in the paddock,” he said. “I feel that it’s sometimes to distract from perhaps what’s going on in your own house, that sometimes you try and light a fire somewhere else.”

It was a reference to the tit-for-tat of trying to eke out an advantage that is an ongoing part of the sport, with Red Bull having asked the FIA to look into the McLaren rear wing which they considered to be flexing too much at Monza and Baku. McLaren insisted the wing was legal but also conceded that they would not use it again, perhaps no great sacrifice given Las Vegas is the only race left where a low-downforce specification is required.

That this storm on a tea tray has blown up to such a scale, however, is indicative of the tension and importance of what is at stake in both championship battles, such that even a speculative advantage is questioned. Without a formal protest against Red Bull it appears it is merely the potential to make such changes that has prompted the furore rather than it actually being used. Hence the FIA not issuing a punishment but rather ensuring with the seal in future that no adjustments in parc fermé are made.

This is far from the first technical spat this season and may well not be the last, even over these final six races. It’s a battleground based in the dry reams of technical regulations which might yet play a part in the title fight at the sharp end on track, as Verstappen and Norris face off.