McLaren trialled Spanish GP stiffer F1 front wing in Imola, shrugs off flexi-wing impact

McLaren is shrugging off suggestions it will be affected by the Spanish Grand Prix’s flexi-wing clampdown, as Autosport can reveal the team has already trialled its stiffer wing to good effect in Imola.

After imposing stricter limits on rear wing flexing in the off-season, and tightening them further in China and Japan, Formula 1’s governing body has also implemented harsher tests from this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona as well.

Originally the FIA’s technical regulations stated that when 100kg of load is applied symmetrically to both sides of the car, the wing’s vertical deflection must be no greater than 15mm. When the load is applied to only one side, the vertical deflection must be no more than 20mm. From Spain onwards those tolerances have been brought down to 10mm and 15mm respectively.

The FIA has also reduced the tolerance for flexing of the front wing flap from 5mm to 3mm under 6kg of load.

It was widely believed that McLaren has been the most advanced in exploiting front wing flexing to its benefit, by being able to run more front wing to help its car balance in slow-speed corners and then using the flexing phenomenon to help out in high speed corners and the straights.

Speaking after last weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur said the clampdown “can be a game-changer for everybody because we don’t know the impact on every single team of the new regulation”.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Christian Horner have sounded less convinced that the rules from Barcelona will change the 2025 pecking order significantly.

McLaren has always been bemused at suggestions the FIA’s technical directive will peg it back, and it has now become apparent the team has already sampled its reinforced, Barcelona specification front wing in Imola free practice. At the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix weekend Lando Norris sampled the new front wing specification on his first run in FP1, with the corresponding data appearing to dispel any further doubts that this weekend’s rule change will impact it.

“We head into the Barcelona weekend conscious that the competition is likely to be much tighter this weekend,” Stella mentioned ahead of this weekend’s running. “As I briefly mentioned in Monaco, this is a circuit with track characteristics which may suit our competitors very well, which in turn could make the field particularly tight. With this in mind, we expect a race more in line with Imola and Suzuka.

“We also see the introduction of a new front wing TD this weekend, which is an entirely separate conversation. It may appear that this TD has created this tightening of the field, but this would be an incorrect assumption. In fact, we previously ran this new front wing as a test item in Imola with Lando and saw a negligible performance impact, in line with our simulations.

“Therefore, it’s clear that the answer to why the field may tighten up this weekend lies away from the reductive assessment that the new TD has slowed the MCL39 down.”

As strengthening the carbon fibre composite in the front wing is a structural change and not an aerodynamic one – given that the actual shape remains the same – the front wing wasn’t featured on the FIA document where teams have to declare their upgrades.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

The reason why McLaren is so sceptical of its Barcelona form is because it fears the circuit’s high-downforce layout will align closer with Imola and Jeddah, where Verstappen’s Red Bull was extremely strong.

In Imola and Monaco Stella said it would be wrong to compare apples and pears [oranges – sic], and lower-speed circuits like Bahrain and Miami with the aforementioned high-speed layouts.

But its Imola trial could be the latest example that there doesn’t appear to be a silver bullet that has propelled the papaya squad to the front of the field, but a series of smaller engineering solutions that all contribute to its pace and tyre management. Expecting the 2025 season to go pear-shaped for the world champions might be fanciful.