McLaren turns spotlight on F1 rivals’ rear wings

McLaren is turning its attention to technical elements of rival Formula 1 teams, in the wake of the ’mini DRS’ controversy of Baku and Singapore.

Images of the ingenious way the papaya-coloured 2024 car’s rear wing opened up drag-shedding gaps at the extreme ends caused a furore after the Azerbaijan GP.

Backed unofficially by Ferrari, Red Bull lodged three protests with the governing FIA and McLaren ultimately agreed to tweak the design for the future.

The Woking based team issued a statement after the agreement and "conversations" with the FIA, insisting the low-downforce Baku wing actually "complies with the regulations" and passed "all deflection tests".

"We would also expect the FIA to have similar conversations with other teams in relation to the compliance of their rear wings," McLaren’s statement concluded.

Team boss Andrea Stella then confirmed that McLaren does indeed have some concerns about the rear wing solutions on rival Formula 1 cars.

"It (the process) gave us the opportunity with the FIA to inform them that we also do some due diligence in terms of studying other people (teams)," he said.

"We don’t want to spend so much energy with the media to try to create big stories. We simply told the FIA what we think is going on, and we are sure they will talk to other teams and make sure they also change their own decisions.

"Maybe these things are less visible than ours, but they certainly exist," Stella added.