Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz are putting on a happy face at the Tour de France, but I'm not really buying it – is anyone?

Does anyone remember that viral meme of two crying and/or angry children forced into one oversized t-shirt, playfully labelled their 'Get Along Shirt', teary heads poking out of the neck and one arm in each sleeve as they were pushed into close proximity presumably after a childish argument?

Hopefully you know what I'm on about, because at the moment it is the first thing that comes to mind when I see Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz supposedly being happy families at the Tour de France, trying to deliver an antidote to some terse words exchanged after stage 6 earlier this week.

After Evenepoel said on Thursday that he was "angry, and rightly so" about asking Lipowitz for a lead-out on the mountain and not getting one – "I asked him to do one kilometre of work at the front, and that wasn't possible. That made me angry, and that will need to be discussed thoroughly tonight." – the denials and rebuffs came quickly.

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It was "being made out to be bigger than it actually was", team manager Ralph Denk said, adding that Evenepoel's comments came "in the heat of the moment, that was after over 180km of mountain stage, but it was no big deal". The pair had dinner together that evening, apparently. The image of tranquility (or maybe that was Evenepoel's choice of location for their 'thorough discussion'?)

Then, yesterday morning, Red Bull posted an Instagram story of the pair sitting together on the bus, answering questions about how stage 6 went, clearly led to reflect on how good a stage it had been. Lipowitz looks to Evenpoel before saying yeah, of course they're happy about yesterday's stage.

Their press officer is not exactly subtle about it. He asks "Remco, happy also?" – to which Evenepoel affirms "Yes, yes" – before going straight in with a leading question about the press waiting outside the bus who are saying "that you are big fighting and so on, but it doesn't look like this, eh?"

"No, all good," Evenepoel says. "You speak and you forget," he adds, whilst Lipowitz sits smiling in the background. The video is the Instagram equivalent of the 'Get Along Shirt'.

After the video was taken, Evenepoel continued to say the right things, trying to dispel any notions of ongoing drama.

"Everything has been spoken about in the team," he said. "Everything is said. The past is in the past and now we have to look forward, because the Tour is not waiting, so we have to continue and look to the next stages."

Attention-grabbing headline and intro aside, I don't actually think they are beefing to the point of not being able to get along or bickering in a childhood manner. They're both adults, after all, mature and intelligent ones by my reckoning, and they're at work, so I'm sure they have, to an extent, smoothed over whatever Evenepoel was annoyed about on Thursday, and I'm sure they will find a way to work together and not let this spat turn into a long-term issue. In fact they probably already have done that (for now).

But I'm not convinced that that means there's no tension at all. It may not be disruptive or overtly problematic, but there clearly is a little something brewing, and to suggest that there's absolutely NO room for tension, no niggles, no possibility for some leadership struggles seems laughably idealistic.

Even the most united pair of co-leaders will eventually have a moment where one has to decide to work for the other or not, so why would Red Bull be any different? The team are never going to say 'Yeah, it's super tense', and I'm sure it isn't, but going into the polar opposite direction isn't convincing anyone, either.

The team and both riders are in a really tricky position. Both have finished third at the Tour de France before, and both have reasons to argue that they've earnt leadership more: Lipowitz will say that his podium spot came more recently, in last year's edition, a race Evenepoel dropped out of. And Evenepoel will say that he's a more accomplished Grand Tour rider overall, having won the Vuelta a España. Both arguments hold water.

They're also clearly on a pretty similar level right now, so obviously neither is going to feel that he needs to give up his own chances for the other just yet. The old adage is that the road will decide, and so far it hasn't done that, so I'm sure it is difficult going into big stages with no clear handle on who is working for who.

With all this in mind, it's very hard to deny that there isn't even the smallest bit of tension between the two, or the very real possibility for some. No amount of positive quotes in the press or smiley Instagram posts can convince viewers otherwise, unfortunately.

Evenepoel is a rider who always wears his heart on his sleeve and says what he thinks, a quality most greatly admire him for – as a journalist, I certainly appreciate his honesty and thoughtfulness. But if you're Lipowitz, it can't not sting to hear what he had to say on Thursday, and perhaps a little bit of media-trained fluff talk would have been appreciated by the German in that moment. He didn't have to be so public with his immediate frustration.

But ultimately, that's not what we're ever going to get from Evenepoel. He will always tell it like it is in the moment, and he will also always go away and reflect and return to any situation with maturity.

However, whilst this Evenepoel-Lipowitz situation might be smoothed over for now, it's already clear that the threshold for irritation and conflict is very, very now. So whilst it's all smiles for now, the road is going up again soon, and so too might the tension levels. The leadership question will have to be answered at some point, it just depends when, and indeed how.

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