McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall has revealed that it questioned the legality of Ferrari’s ‘Macarena’ wing, believing it contravened Formula 1‘s new radical regulations cycle.
The dramatic shift in many areas of the sport triggered by the new ruleset has led to teams finding several different aspects of interpetation to them.
Perhaps the most notable of those has been Mercedes’ controversial compression ratio trick in its power unit, which caused an early amendment to the rules.
But Ferrari also caused a stir of its own with the rear wing first displayed for a mere five laps in Bahrain pre-season testing, and once more in free practice in Shanghai.
The rotating elements of it are designed to produce more downforce and therefore increase performance, but its development has not yet been enough for it to be deemed race ready.
With clearance from the FIA, the ‘Macarena’ wing is set to make a return at next weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, having been tested once more in a ‘filming day’ test at Monza this week.
But speaking to media, including Motorsport Week, Marshall explained how the nature of the new regulations left him questioning why the Scuderia‘s wing would have been allowed.
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“We thought the regulations were going to be quite prescriptive,” he said.
“The tendency now, the way the regulations are written… in the bad, old days, we used to have a load of numbers and stuff on a bit of paper, and that would just define some rather simple boxes you have to keep your volumes within.
“And now there’s a lot of very complicated CAD models which are, on the face of it, far more difficult to be creative around.
“You look at the legality box you’re given, and it almost draws the car for you, or so you think.
“You design your car, and then you get to the first event and, as you say, there are quite a few different solutions out there to look at on other people’s cars.
“You’ve got things like Ferrari’s rear wing, which everyone saw and thought: ‘Oh, okay, yeah, that’s all right. We’re sure that’s legal?’ Yeah, it is. Okay. Well, well done then.'”
“They’ve done some more interesting stuff with their exhaust exit as well, which everyone looked at and thought: ‘That’s quite interesting’ — yeah, that was good as well’.
“Very different front wing geometries from different teams. Everyone thought the front wings were going to look the same, anything but that.
“I think every car’s got something on it where you look at it and go: ‘Oh, yeah. That’s completely different to anything we were thinking of.’
“So yes, bottom line is nothing like as prescriptive as we thought it was going to be.”
Ferrari’s wing has certainly been able to draw a lot of attention, and there will be more upon it in Miami if it makes a fresh appearance.
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