Red Bull's drivers may be raging, but they today scored another one-two in first practice ahead of Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix.
Mark Webber's remarks yesterday that his championship charge this season has been "inconvenient" to the team he feels are emotionally favouring Sebastian Vettel, caused a significant stir.
But it was Vettel and Webber out in front at Interlagos, one of the greatest tracks on the calendar, and at 4.309 kilometres the second shortest behind Monaco.
Vettel, in desperate need of a win to remain in the hunt ahead of next weekend's final race in Abu Dhabi, comfortably outpaced Webber by just under half a second.
The 23-year-old, who trails Ferrari's Fernando Alonso by 25 points, produced a lap of one minute 12.328 seconds, with Webber 0.482secs adrift.
It was an ominous sign, with the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button third and fourth, 0.517s and 0.939s off the pace respectively.
Hamilton, who is 21 points behind Alonso, complained of oversteer during the 90-minute session, while reigning champion Button - who is 42 points down and knows nothing less than a win will be good enough - was involved in a number of wing changes before finding the right set up.
As for Ferrari and Alonso, their weekend began in disappointing fashion, with the Spaniard grinding to a halt in the dying moments.
The team are desperately attempting to manage the engine situation with Alonso's car after he used up his permitted eight for the season some time ago.
Since then they have been swapping and changing engines, trying to extend their life, even admitting as practice started they would do so in between the two sessions, a highly unusual arrangement.
With the engine for this session on its last legs, it finally let go just as the clock had counted past zero, necessitating a change anyway but without penalty on a Friday.
Alonso was left trailing down in 13th place, with team-mate Felipe Massa 14th, both just over 1.9s behind Vettel.
Renault's Robert Kubica was fifth, followed by Mercedes duo Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher in sixth and eighth, with the Germans sandwiching Williams' Rubens Barrichello.
Force India's Adrian Sutil and the Sauber of Nick Heidfeld rounded out the top 10, with the latter's team-mate Kamui Kobayashi in 11th, albeit ending his practice outing in ignominious fashion.
Kobayashi misjudged his pace into turn six, a sweeping left-hander, sliding off and clipping a barrier which punctured his left-rear tyre.
Minutes earlier Renault's Vitaly Petrov had done the same thing, although his slide across the run-off area culminated in him hitting a tyre barrier.
With the Russian's future on the line, in particular after crashing out in the last two races in Japan and Korea, the latest shunt will have further endangered his chances of a new contract.