McLaren is unhappy at the manner in which the FIA has handled the bendy wing saga, which came to light last time out in Spain, with team principal Andreas Seidl calling for swifter action.
Video footage from the Spanish Grand Prix showed the rear wing on the Red Bull RB16B flexing at high-speed. This is illegal under the technical regulations which ban ‘moveable aerodynamic devices’.
In reaction to the footage, the FIA issued a technical directive advising the teams of increased load tests on the rear wing, but these tests won’t come into force until the French GP in mid-June.
It is claimed this is to provide teams with sufficient time to redesign their rear wings if necessary, but Seidl doesn’t agree with such a delay as it gives those teams longer to continue exploiting what is clearly a breach of the regulations.
“First of all, I think when you see all the pictures from Barcelona, it’s pretty clear what is happening there,” Seidl said on the matter. “Therefore, we welcome the reaction from the FIA with the technical directive and we are happy with the basic content.
“Where we strongly disagree is the timing of the implementation, because from our point of view there is no reason, after not just one team had already the advantage of doing things, which from our view, are clearly against the regulations.
“[Those teams] had that advantage already for several races, which is something we are obviously not happy with. But now, allowing them to have a further advantage for some more races, it’s clearly something we strongly disagree with and are in conversation with the FIA [about].”
Seidl wants to see the FIA take tougher action against those teams which are knowingly breaking the rules to gain an unfair advantage.
“We simply hope that the FIA shows a very strong hand now, because from our point of view, it’s simply not acceptable. It puts teams that comply with the regulations at a big disadvantage.”
Asked if McLaren would consider protesting those teams, Seidl added: “In principle I’m not a big fan of protesting other teams and cars and so on. All I can say at the moment is that we are in dialogue with the FIA to understand what they will put in place in order to make sure that teams that have designed devices or parts that allow things that we are seeing in Barcelona, simply can’t use these devices or parts on their car from now onwards. And then we take it from there.”
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