McLaren have had to alter their car to conform with the new FIA load tests set to be introduced at the Italian GP, according to McLaren’s chief engineer, Tim Goss.
The new load tests will focus on the floor of the car, rather than the front-wings in a bid to curb the use of flexi-wings.
During a phone-in with the Woking outfit, Goss confirmed that they haven’t had to change their front-wings, but the bib, or forward floor, has had some minor modifications.
“Firstly on front wings, we haven’t had to make any modifications to the front wings in terms of body work flexibility,” Goss confirmed.
“As far as the bib is concerned, the new aspect load test is a little challenging and we’ve had to make some minor modifications to make sure that we’re well inside the limits that the FIA has set on that.
“So we’ve modified our bib, taking the opportunity to turn it into a minor performance upgrade as well.”
Goss believes almost all the teams will have had to modify their floors to comply with the new tests.
“I’d expect most teams would probably have had to make changes to comply with that. As far as articulated planks are concerned – there are a number of teams that run floor skids in multiple pieces – and the FIA have tried to ban articulated skid blocks and I imagine other teams would have to make modifications to comply with that.”
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