Motivated by a question of Vincent Lafforgue, we study the Banach spaces X satisfying the following property: there is a function ε → ∆ X (ε) tending to zero with ε > 0 such that every operator T : L 2 → L 2 with T ≤ ε that is simultaneously contractive (i.e. of norm ≤ 1) on L 1 and on L ∞ must be of norm ≤ ∆ X (ε) on L 2 (X). We show that ∆ X (ε) ∈ O(ε α) for some α > 0 iff X is isomorphic to ...