{"id":84489,"date":"2025-05-08T11:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T11:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/84489\/"},"modified":"2025-05-08T11:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T11:32:09","slug":"mclaren-warning-to-distracted-rivals-as-significant-fia-rule-change-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/84489\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren warning to ‘distracted’ rivals as ‘significant’ FIA rule change looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1\u2019s upcoming flexi wing technical directive will make \u201cno difference\u201d to McLaren, but Zak Brown appreciates that the saga has \u201cdistracted\u201d McLaren\u2019s rivals.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flexible wings emerged as one of the hot topics in last year\u2019s championship as rivals accused one another of running flexi front wings, that said to be the trick to Mercedes\u2019 Monaco gains, while rear wings came to the fore later in the campaign.<\/p>\n

Will McLaren be hamstrung by TD018?<\/p>\n

Rear-facing footage from Oscar Piastri\u2019s McLaren<\/a> as he held off Charles Leclerc at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed a mini-DRS opening on the straights.<\/p>\n

The upper flap of Piastri\u2019s rear wing notably pivoted upwards, opening a small gap in the DRS flap that effectively dumped extra drag and generated greater straight-line speed.<\/p>\n

McLaren tweaked the design of their rear wings after talks with the FIA, but that did little to silence the complaints, prompting the FIA to issue a revised technical directive, TD018, to the teams ahead of the F1 2025 season.<\/p>\n

But while stricter rear wing tests were introduced at the very beginning of the campaign, new tests for the front wings were delayed until the Spanish Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

F1 2025: The flexi wing saga<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Explained: The FIA clampdown on F1\u2019s \u2018flexible wings\u2019 saga<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Uncovered: How teams are exploiting the flexi-wing gap effect<\/a><\/p>\n

That race is now on the horizon, part three of the upcoming triple-header that begins later this month with Imola.<\/p>\n

Rival teams believe McLaren and Mercedes could be the hardest hit, although Red Bull team boss Christian Horner concedes every team will be affected to some extent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for sure it\u2019s going to have an effect,\u201d he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. \u201cNow how much it affects your competitors versus you is difficult to predict, but for sure, it\u2019s a significant change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s not just a tweak, so it will affect all of the cars. It\u2019s just to what quantum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown, though, stands by his claim that it won\u2019t hurt McLaren, who have been the dominant force this season.<\/p>\n

The Woking team has won five of six Grands Prix as well as the Sprint at the Miami Grand Prix to lead both championship races. Piastri is 16 points clear of Lando Norris in a McLaren 1-2 in the Drivers\u2019 standings<\/a> while McLaren are 105 points up on Mercedes in the teams\u2019 standings.<\/p>\n

If anything, Brown believes the upcoming TD has benefitted McLaren as it has kept their rivals distracted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat makes no difference to us,\u201d he insisted when asked about the TD during an interview with De Telegraaf<\/a>. \u201cWe are not worried at all about that rule change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn recent times, there have been many suggestions from others about our car. And none of it was accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the more they are distracted and focused on our car rather than their own performance, that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Championship leader Piastri has also downplayed the looming TD, the Australian confident that McLaren\u2019s MCL39 will be \u201cstrong\u201d all season, even after Spain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty confident we\u2019ll be strong all year,\u201d Piastri said last month. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019ll change too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve not spoken to the team about it massively in all honestly, which probably tells you enough about that.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s see when we get to Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI think we\u2019ll be a strong team all year.\u201d<\/p>\n

One person who is interested in seeing how the technical directive plays out is Max Verstappen\u2019s father, Jos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Watching on as his son risks losing the World title to McLaren, as his deficit to Piastri is already 32 points, the former F1 driver is annoyed that the FIA made the call to only introduce the clampdown at round nine instead of at the beginning of the campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d Jos told Racexpress<\/strong>. \u201cBut then suddenly there is a rule change around the wings\u2026 Then I think, \u2018do that at the beginning of the year, then it\u2019s the same for everyone\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why after so many races, and then it\u2019s no longer allowed?<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they have benefited from it until then. I think that\u2019s so stupid, but that\u2019s part of it, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next: FIA set to release findings of forensic McLaren brake checks<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1\u2019s upcoming flexi wing technical directive will make \u201cno difference\u201d to McLaren, but Zak Brown appreciates that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,225,1710,12,79,16,15,40707],"class_list":{"0":"post-84489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-mclaren","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-zak-brown"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114471996227954193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}