Behind the scenes of flexible wings: not only McLaren forced to make changes in Austin. Several teams, besides McLaren, were forced to make adjustments amid FIA changes to flexi wings.

The United States Grand Prix weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, in addition to Ferrari’s one-two finish, was marked by further technical controversies, following the media storm that arose after the Baku GP regarding the flexible wing issue.

After Oscar Piastri’s splendid victory in the Azerbaijani capital, an on-board video of the MCL-38 began circulating on social media, where the unusual opening of the rear wing flap could be seen with the DRS closed. The footage was quickly seized upon by Red Bull, who wasted no time in filing a complaint with the FIA, seeking clarification on the matter and possibly pushing for an exemplary punishment for the Woking team.

The federation, which initially declared the papaya car’s rear wing legal, later intervened, not penalizing McLaren but issuing new guidelines that all teams would have to follow starting from Austin.

Not only McLaren under scrutiny
However, as confirmed by Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s Director of Single-Seaters, McLaren wasn’t the only team to make adjustments to the scrutinized area.

“After Singapore, we issued a communication on rear wings, stating what we would consider acceptable or not,” explained the former Benetton, McLaren, and Ferrari engineer to motorsport.com. “Two or three teams had to make small modifications to comply.”

So what do the new parameters consist of? “We don’t want the opening (of the flap) to exceed 2 mm,” Nikolas Tombazis explained – “There’s a natural opening, due to the way the wings are mounted, how they deform, and so on, but in some teams, the deformation was greater. We just want to make sure there’s no ongoing trend in a certain direction, but not because we plan to immediately introduce a new test or anything.” – he pointed out.

Would the federation have taken stricter countermeasures if McLaren had persisted with the use of the “mini DRS”?

“Yes, we would have, because we gave them a specific warning,” Nikolas Tombazis concluded, closing the topic – “We told them: ‘Look, we believe this is something you need to change.’ If they had ignored us, and generally they don’t, we would have reported the issue.”