McLaren are set to run an \u201cexperimental\u201d rear wing during Friday practice at the Austrian Grand Prix, with Oscar Piastri confirming that it will only be tested \u2013 and not raced \u2013 at this stage.<\/p>\n
In McLaren<\/a>\u2019s pre-weekend preview, Technical Director of Applied Engineering, Neil Houldey, pointed to several upgrades for the MCL40, as the reigning World Champions push to close the gap to the front of the field under F1\u2019s new era.<\/p>\n \u201cFor this event, we\u2019ve focused on minor detail updates around the car\u2019s rear corners, as well as an experimental rear wing that will run throughout Friday\u2019s sessions,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the overall package is lighter than some of our recent updates, these developments are all part of our season-long development pathway, and we\u2019re continuing to look for every lap time opportunity wherever we can.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked during Thursday\u2019s press conference if the rear wing will be raced at the Red Bull Ring, Piastri<\/a> confirmed: \u201cNo, we won\u2019t race it. I believe it\u2019s on Lando [Norris\u2019] car tomorrow. It\u2019s to test out; it\u2019s not ready to race at the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously we\u2019ve seen some of the creative solutions [from rival teams], and they don\u2019t come without their challenges, clearly. It won\u2019t be raced, but useful to try it out.\u201d<\/p>\n Piastri\u2019s comments come after both Ferrari and Red Bull caught the eye<\/a> with rotating rear wing designs aimed at maximising performance under F1\u2019s 2026 regulations, which feature active aerodynamics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ferrari initially debuted their \u2018flip-flop\u2019 rear wing during pre-season testing in Bahrain, tested it again in China and then ran it throughout the Miami Grand Prix weekend, where Red Bull also rolled out a striking creation.<\/p>\n Those experiments aside, Piastri is focused on getting his 2026 season back on track, after a tricky Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix that saw him qualify back in seventh and finish the race in a distant fifth position.<\/p>\n \u201cI think on a personal level, yes, I\u2019ve got a good understanding,\u201d he said, when asked about learning lessons from Barcelona, and enjoying a stronger weekend in Austria.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot of homework as to why the race in Barcelona was such a struggle for me. I think we\u2019ve got a good idea why, and a good plan on how to not repeat that.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Ferrari took a good step forward in Barcelona, Mercedes are still the benchmark as well, and I\u2019m hearing along the grapevine Red Bull have got some big things [coming] as well.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be easy for us. Yes, it has been a good track for us in the past, but there\u2019s no illusion for us that we\u2019re suddenly going to be amazing here and the team to beat \u2013 we\u2019re definitely not going to be.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully we can get close and kind of be in the position that we have been in at certain points, where we can capitalise on dramas for others, but I think to be able to do it on merit or pure pace is going to be a bit of a stretch. I\u2019d like to be happily surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren are set to run an \u201cexperimental\u201d rear wing during Friday practice at the Austrian Grand Prix, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-759790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}