McLaren is braced for a much bigger threat from Red Bull at the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend, but it won't be down to Formula 1's flexi-wing clampdown.
Red Bull and Ferrari are convinced that tightening up what teams can do with flexi-wings will have an impact on the pecking order. They have been firm believers that McLaren and then Mercedes have exploited this area of the rules more than others, and taken it too far.
So when every team - supposedly, anyway - runs a new front wing this weekend, it will be a reset in the aeroelasticity battleground. And McLaren's advantage could be neutralised - not that it believes the likes of Red Bull are playing this particular narrative honestly.
"Formula 1 is a technical business, but obviously some people are good at dropping baits here and there, moving away from the technical facts," said McLaren team boss Andrea Stella at the Monaco GP last weekend.
"It's up to you to take the bait."
On Thursday in Spain, Stella said he expects this weekend to be "more in line with Imola and Suzuka", where Max Verstappen's Red Bull was able to defeat the McLarens.
“We head into the Barcelona weekend conscious that the competition is likely to be much tighter this weekend," Stella said.
"As I briefly mentioned in Monaco, this is a circuit with track characteristics which may suit our competitors very well, which in turn could make the field particularly tight.
"We also see the introduction of a new front wing technical directive this weekend, which is an entirely separate conversation.
"It may appear that this TD has created this tightening of the field, but this would be an incorrect assumption.
"In fact, we previously ran this new front wing as a test item in Imola with Lando [Norris] and saw a negligible performance impact, in line with our simulations.
"Therefore, it’s clear that the answer to why the field may tighten up this weekend lies away from the reductive assessment that the new TD has slowed the MCL39 down."
Rivals 'dropping bait'
Stella's point about other teams "dropping bait" is the latest in a run of recent remarks where he has been riled up by Red Bull putting a lot of pressure and attention on McLaren for various alleged technical tricks. So what is he getting at?
Well, allow Lando Norris to put it simply: "We saw between Miami and Imola for ourselves, we can look like heroes one weekend and then we get beaten the next.
"And it's not because anything changed, literally just the track. The car's the same, the tyres were the same.
"It's literally just the track's different."
Let's use this weekend as an example. Stella knows it is entirely possible that McLaren is threatened or beaten in Spain. But he would argue correlation does not equal causation, and it is also likely that Barcelona would swing things back to Verstappen and his RB21 regardless of any front wing tweaks.
"I expect them [Red Bull] to be quick," Oscar Piastri said.
"It's a layout that's been similar in some characteristics to where they have been quick this year. All the higher speed circuits are generally where Max and Red will have been very strong.
"And this is another one of those circuits, so I expect them to be definitely in the fight this weekend."
This weekend is certainly likely to be a better one for Verstappen - and not just compared to Monaco, where the Red Bull was at its worst all season. The high-speed Barcelona circuit features a lot more of the types of corners where the RB21 has been strong this season, puts much less emphasis on kerb riding, and does not demand big set-up compromises for wide corner speed ranges.
And this taps into Stella's belief that the swings already witnessed so far this season at the front have been a function of car characteristics and different track layouts. Whereas some - Red Bull, fans, the media - have been too quick to assume performance shifts have suddenly emerged: for example, when Red Bull beat McLaren in a warm Imola race where tyre management was key, just two weeks after being destroyed by McLaren in a warm Miami race where tyre management was also key.
"There's a tendency to compare apples and pears," said Stella in Monaco.
"Imola belongs to the category of Saudi, Japan: high-speed corners, narrow tracks, and if we look at those circuits, on pole position was Red Bull. And in the race in Saudi if it wasn't for the penalty of Max, Max would have won the race.
"And if we look at the pace between McLaren and Red Bull in Japan, in Saudi, for me the picture is very consistent with the picture we had in Imola, and if we look at the gap between McLaren and Mercedes and Ferrari, the picture is very consistent with what we had in Imola.
"If we compare the race in Imola with the race in Miami, we are comparing an apple with a pear. Miami is a low-speed-dominated circuit. And with all the investment we have done from an aerodynamic development point of view, our car has improved massively in these low-speed corners.
"So, we want to compare Miami? Let's look back at China. What happened in China? The two McLarens disappeared - P1, P2.
"We want to compare in Bahrain, low-speed circuit: Oscar dominated the race. Lando started P6, with the penalty from the [incorrect position on the] grid, and still he managed to recover positions."
Red Bull should be stronger here
Stella's assessment is correct, when judged against general performance and also more specifically where the Red Bull was strongest at each track.
Verstappen's biggest defeats of the season have come in China, Bahrain, Miami and Monaco - circuits with low or zero high-speed content and an emphasis on low/medium-speed corners. At qualifying on those tracks, it was common to see Verstappen faster on the straights and through faster corners - like the entry to Turn 1 in China, or the sweeping corners in the first sector of Miami, or Monaco's Massenet.
So, to Spain, where (especially since the return to the layout without the final chicane) medium- and high-speed corners dominate. And there is a rare scenario whereby all the major parties across McLaren and Red Bull actually agree on something: that Red Bull should be more competitive at Barcelona.
"Coming back to Barcelona, I hope we can replicate closer to what we did in Imola," said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner.
"We arrive there 25 points [behind], we only gave away three points to the championship leader [in Monaco], we're still within a race win with, what, 16 races to go.
"There's an enormous amount of racing, plus the sprint races etc - a long, long way to go in this championship."
Even Verstappen, who was not in a chatty mood at all in Monaco, suggested Spain should at least be better for Red Bull. But he does not expect it to be because of the front wing changes, of which he said "of course people always hope for a big upset but I honestly don't think it will change a lot".
"I don't expect massive time gains or losses between the teams," he reiterated at Barcelona on Thursday.
Should Red Bull really get back on top in Spain, Verstappen might be tempted to revise his view. And there will be plenty who will immediately conclude that a McLaren defeat must mean the flexi-wing clampdown constitutes some kind of 'Gotcha!' moment.
In reality it should just be treated as a single case study with a potentially coincidental correlation, given there is a bigger body of evidence that already suggests this will not be a straightforward McLaren weekend.
