Lando Norris couldn’t resist a grin when “tapegate” came up in Mexico. Red Bull copped a €50,000 fine in Austin — half of it suspended — after a team member stepped back into the gate well after the formation lap had started, in the process reaching for a strip of McLaren tape that marked Norris’ grid slot. The detail Norris found “extra funny”? He never used the tape in the first place.
This was one of those quintessentially F1 sideshows that somehow steals a headline on a busy race week. McLaren had laid down a thin strip of tape as a backup reference to the painted line in P2 at COTA — a little belt-and-braces marker teams often deploy. A Red Bull staffer went for it, marshals moved to close the gate, and the procedure was delayed. The stewards sanctioned Red Bull for the safety breach; the tape itself wasn’t the issue, wasn’t cited, and wasn’t even necessary, according to Norris.
“I didn’t mind; I didn’t use the tape,” Norris shrugged on media day in Mexico City. “It made it even funnier because they got a penalty and I didn’t even need it. We just put it there in case.”
And in case you’re wondering who won the tug-of-war? McLaren, apparently. The team had already made their tape harder to remove after noticing attempts to peel it off at a couple of earlier rounds. Norris likened it to those stubborn weekend paddock passes you can never quite unstick from your windscreen. “They tried to take it off and failed,” he smiled. “We made it… special.”
The whole thing landed somewhere between playground mischief and the subtler end of gridcraft. Teams hunt for marginal gains everywhere — tyre blankets, brake ducts, clutch bite points — so a discreet marker on the grid is hardly eyebrow-raising. More to the point, the drivers don’t actually need it most of the time.
“There’s a yellow line in the box,” Max Verstappen pointed out, fairly. “You look at that and park the car.” Norris agreed he leans on the painted line the vast majority of the time — “95 percent” by his estimate. Sometimes he’ll use the extra marker if the angle’s awkward. At COTA, he didn’t.
The stewards’ report was clear: none of this hinged on tape. The sanction was for re-entering the gate well once the formation lap had begun and impeding marshals who were closing the gate — an “unsafe act” in their words, with the fine intended to discourage a repeat. It’s the kind of procedural yellow card that lives in the gray zone until it doesn’t; once the lap starts, everyone knows the drill. Close the gates, clear the lane, start the race.
Red Bull, for their part, pushed back gently. A senior team figure said they respected the stewards but believed their staffer had been following marshal guidance, calling it “probably a misunderstanding.” They’ll review it; they always do. But the verdict stands, and the message was received up and down the pit lane: don’t hold up the gate.
Beyond the bureaucracy, this was a little window into how teams poke and prod at each other on weekends that matter. “Side quests,” as Norris called them — the kind that keep mechanics busy and drivers amused while the clock ticks toward lights out. In a year where the margins are brutally fine and everyone’s copy-pasting each other’s upgrades within weeks, the soft edges become a theatre of their own.
No one’s pretending a strip of tape wins you a grand prix. But the point isn’t the adhesive. It’s the mindset. Find the edge, protect the edge, defend the edge. And if your rival’s trying to peel it back? Make it stickier.
If there’s a takeaway from tapegate, it’s probably this: these teams will contest anything that might influence a start, a launch, or a turn-one trajectory. They’ll also contest the contest. In Mexico, Norris was relaxed, even playful. He’ll keep using the tape when he wants. McLaren will keep making it stubborn. Verstappen will keep eyeballing the painted line. And the FIA will keep closing the gates on time.
In other words: business as usual. Only now with a little extra glue.
