24/10/2024
NEWS STORY
While attention continues to focus on Red Bull's ride height device, the FIA has revealed that McLaren wasn't the only team to attract attention to its rear wing.
The Woking outfit was forced to make changes to its rear wing after footage during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix revealed that it was rotating at high speed, thereby changing the gap and creating what has been called a 'mini-DRS'.
In conjunction with the FIA, McLaren agreed to modify its rear wing after concerns were raised by rivals.
However, it has now been revealed that the Woking outfit wasn't the only team warned by the FIA during the break between the Singapore event and last weekend's race in the US.
"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 Motorsport.com.
"Two or three teams had to make some small tweaks to adjust to that," he revealed.
"There's some natural opening, because of the way the wings are mounted and deformed and so on," he continued, referring to the permitted 2mm allowance, "but some teams were deforming more.
"We just want to make sure that there isn't any sort of continuing trend in a certain direction, it's not because we have any immediate plans to introduce a new test or anything."
Despite making adjustments earlier in the season when fears were first raised, following the Azerbaijan race McLaren "proactively" adjusted its rear wings without waiting on a directive from the governing body.
"McLaren proactively offered to make some minor adjustments to our rear wing following the Azerbaijan GP," said a McLaren spokesperson. "We have made minor adjustments to all our rear wings since Baku to varying extents to ensure no further issues in this area."
"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."
Speaking at COTA last weekend, Zak Brown confirmed the modifications.
We've made some small modifications, as have some others," he said. "So that's a non-issue."