The FIA has revealed that McLaren isn’t the only team that has had to modify its rear wing in order to be compliant with the Formula 1 technical regulations.
Rear wing flexing became a point of controversy following Oscar Piastri’s flexing slot gap on the rear wing of his McLaren, which, given its straight-line speed benefits was dubbed a ‘mini DRS’.
McLaren and the FIA agreed to amend the low-drag specification rear wing to reduce its flexing and appease rivals’ concerns.
However, the FIA sought to redefine its rear wing flexing tolerances and prompted unnamed outfits to make changes along with McLaren ahead of the United States Grand Prix.
“We issued after Singapore some communication about rear wings, saying what we would consider acceptable or not acceptable,” FIA Single-Seater Director Nikolas Tombazis told Autosport.
“Two or three teams had to make some small tweaks to adjust to that.”
The FIA doesn’t want slot gaps to flex open by more than 2mm and a greater number of reference dots, in conjunction with more sophisticated camera monitors were added to rear wings in Austin.
“There’s some natural opening, because of the way the wings are mounted and deform and so on, but some teams were deforming more,” Tombazis explained.
“We just want to make sure that there isn’t any sort of continuing trend in a certain direction, but it’s not because we have any immediate plans to introduce a new test or anything.”
McLaren makes further rear-wing changes
In addition to changing its low-drag rear wing to reduce flexing, McLaren agreed with the FIA ahead of the United States GP to modify its entire range of rear wings.
“As previously mentioned, McLaren proactively offered to make some minor adjustments to our rear wing following the Azerbaijan GP,” A McLaren spokesperson said (via Autosport).
“We have made minor adjustments to all our rear wings since Baku to varying extents to ensure no further issues in this area.”
At no point has McLaren been in contradiction with the F1 rulers over its rear wing, instead working with the FIA to prevent any wrongdoing in advance.
“We said, ‘Look, we consider that as something you need to change,'” said Tombazis.
“If they had ignored us, and they generally don’t, then we would have reported them.”
Moreover, McLaren CEO Zak Brown revealed in Friday’s United States GP press conference that the team’s “rear wings passed every single test”.
“We’ve made some small modifications, as have some others,” he continued. “So that’s a non-issue.”
READ MORE – Zak Brown: McLaren F1 gained nothing with ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing
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