McLaren boss Andrea Stella has steered the narrative back towards Red Bull over Formula 1’s ongoing rear-wing flex debate.
F1 regulations mandated stiffer rear wings from the start of the 2025 campaign, and those restrictions were tightened further by Round 2 in China.
It’s a saga that shot to prominence last in Azerbaijan when race winner Oscar Piastri’s McLaren MCL38 was demonstrating flex in the uppermost plane of the rear wing that produced an effect colloquially referred to as ‘mini-DRS.’
Even with the regulations tightened this season, video footage emerged of the rear wings upon Lando Norris’ MCL39 and Max Verstappen’s RB21 in Japan, where the former was showing far greater flex.
McLaren’s detractors have questioned the footage, which was reposted on social media by Verstappen’s father, Jos.
But Stella poured cold water on the flexi-wing debate in conversation with Viaplay, saying, “I’m really wondering what is exactly the news here? Like, what are we talking about?
“Are we talking about that there are cars that decide not to have any flexibility at all, and there are cars that decide this is what I’m allowed within the regulations and that I may allow some deflection? Any structure when is loaded with 100 or 200 kilogrammes does deflect.
“Then, if you decide to do it in within the regulations, your performance is actually almost a trade-off, because there are advantages in doing what Red Bull is doing, and they are working very hard to do that.
“They want to retain the load in high-speed, even if this causes a little bit of drag, which is lap time.
“In our case, we want to shed a little bit of drag and a little bit of load, but as long as you do it within the regulations, and that’s the case, then it’s more of a technical point rather than a legality point, if that makes sense.
“So I’m really wondering like, what kind of news are we discussing here?”
Norris thinks people pointing the finger at McLaren’s rear wing are ‘clueless’
Norris has also weighed in on the flexi-wing debate, putting it upon Red Bull to “do a better job.”
The current Drivers’ standings leader said via The Independent, “I think people get it the wrong way round. We’re all fully within the rules. We’re doing a good job.
“Red Bull have had plenty of time to do the same thing as us and they’re not. It is more that they should do a better job rather than keep complaining about things.
“The rules are there. We’re within the rules and that’s all you can ask for.
“There are plenty of things Red Bull do that also push the limits just as much.”
Moreover, Norris questioned people taking video footage out of context.
“I think also the people who just look at these videos are a bit clueless,” he said.
“How do they know it’s the rear wing that’s flexing? They don’t, it could be the whole car so people can just come up with what they want but really they have absolutely no idea.”
READ MORE – Max Verstappen coy on whether flexi-wing clampdown will hamper McLaren
The FIA is making a ‘pigs ear’ of DRS regulations with a mix of objective but vague regulations, then backed by increasing layers of static and dynamic prescriptive limits (measurements.
But wait, now we have another DRS issue. The failure of the FIA DRS utilisation signal. Not clear how many cars were effected? One car or a team org th maybe more. As usual FIA hide the full facts by declaring its a third party track sensor so not the.ir responsibility. Despite the sensor feeding into the FIA Track Control Suite.