McLaren broke the rules and broke Red Bull’s constructors’ championship challenge with its “more than grey” rear wing.
That’s the claim from Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache, who has targeted McLaren’s ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing as the team heads to the 2024 F1 season finale in Abu Dhabi, to claim its first builder name since 1998.
After a dominant start to the season for Red Bull, McLaren emerged as a serious threat, to the point that Red Bull can no longer retain their Constructors’ title this year as McLaren and Ferrari battle for that honour in Abu Dhabi instead.
And a key component of the war between McLaren and Red Bull, the ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing exposed via footage aboard Oscar Piastri’s McLaren in Baku, where he took victory ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
While the lower and upper parts of the rear wing were extended to eliminate drag on the straights, McLaren insisted the rear wing was legal but “proactively” proposed replacing it after talks with the FIA’s governing body.
But Wache is not convinced of the legality of McLaren’s rear wing and with Red Bull excluded from the race because of the constructors’ name, it represents a bitter pill to swallow.
Claiming “what you want is a playing field the same for everybody”, as Red Bull “play with this playing field”, Wache continued to RN365: “I think it’s so difficult to develop that I think some grey areas are so attractive as an engineer.
“When you see the McLaren rear wing, I’m sorry, but it’s more than grey and they use it in a number of races. Because without that, Baku, they won’t win. Even our constructors’ championship will be absolutely different.
But, is that McLaren innovation a frustration, or rather of interest to Wache as an engineer?
He replied: “I don’t reject that. Just like an engineer, you also have to stick to the rules. As for technical regulations, the difference with sports regulations is that you have to prove that you are legal.
“When you have a radar camera between two points, the police can only see you in those two points and you can drive at maximum speed between two points, if you don’t have average speed [controls]. The technical regulations are different – you have to check that you’re right.
“It’s part of the game, but you also have some limits. If the police doesn’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s legal. What happened to Ferrari in the past and everything, that more than the limit. It’s frustrating for us, when the police doesn’t do their job.”
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Ferrari is also very sceptical about McLaren’s rear wing, believing it exceeds the level of the boundary between legal and illegal.
“We have to entrust the technical checks to the FIA, it’s not my job to do so,” Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur said in Singapore. “They have to do it and we have to honestly accept it as truth with them.
“I’m not complaining about that, I think it’s more than on the limit. We’ve all noticed the video and the photo, and it’s a bit frustrating when, if you analyze the Monza scenario perfectly, we had five cars. ” in two hundredths of a second, and you go from P1, P2 to P5, P6 for two hundredths of a second.
“In Baku, we arrive 10 laps in a row side by side [at] Turn 1. But you can imagine that we have a bit of frustration.”
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