There was considerable anticipation surrounding the experimental rear wing that McLaren had planned to evaluate during Friday’s practice sessions at the Austrian Grand Prix. Developed at the team’s Woking headquarters, the new component is based on the same pivoting-wing concept already seen on the Ferrari and Red Bull cars. However, despite the original plan, the innovative rear wing never made its track debut and has, for the time being, been set aside pending further development and testing.
McLaren had made it clear from the outset that this was purely an experimental component, so it is not particularly surprising that issues emerged before the car even left the garage. Situations like this are common when evaluating completely new technologies, especially those involving complex mechanical systems. During the final inspections carried out in the garage, the engineers discovered that the wing was not yet operating exactly as intended and decided to postpone the test.
“Over the past few weeks we’ve done a huge amount of work back at the factory, simply trying to bring something to this event because we knew it would provide a good opportunity to test the wing,” explained McLaren Technical Director Neil Houldey.
“There has been a great deal of laboratory work over the past few days, and we knew that once we arrived here we would still have some final approval work to complete. When we installed the wing and carried out the final verification, we simply didn’t feel confident enough to let it make its debut during the opening practice session. So we’re sending it back to the factory, where there is still some work to be completed before bringing it back to the circuit.”
Both Ferrari and Red Bull have already demonstrated just how challenging it is to develop a fully functional pivoting rear wing. The internal mechanisms required to allow the movable flap to rotate are extremely sophisticated, but they are also exceptionally difficult to engineer and make consistently reliable. In this respect, the McLaren solution briefly seen inside the team’s garage appears to follow a philosophy closer to Red Bull’s design, at least regarding the overall architecture of the mechanism.
Unlike Ferrari’s solution, which relocates the actuation system inside the endplates, both McLaren and Red Bull have retained a centrally mounted actuator. This means the rear wing flap must rotate upwards above the actuator by pivoting from behind. As a result, McLaren’s version is also expected to use a complex articulated linkage positioned along the sides of the wing, similar to the system used on the Red Bull RB22, with several components dedicated to lifting the outer section of the flap while ensuring smooth and controlled rotation.
“I don’t really want to go into the technical details, but once we actually activated the system, we realised that it simply wasn’t doing what we needed it to do. At that point, it made no sense to waste valuable track time trying to make it work during the first practice session. For us, it was more important to get the car onto the circuit in the configuration we intended to use for the rest of the weekend, especially considering that our plan was only to evaluate the wing for a very, very short period of time,” added Houldey.
“Ultimately, the best decision was to concentrate on preparing the car for this weekend rather than continuing with the development programme. We’ll bring that wing back once we’ve gained a better understanding of the system and feel completely confident in the design.”
It was an understandable decision, particularly because replacing the rear wing would have consumed valuable time. McLaren had already lost part of the opening session with Lando Norris, while Oscar Piastri also encountered difficulties during FP1. Persisting with the original programme, even if only for a handful of data-gathering laps similar to Ferrari’s approach during pre-season testing in Bahrain, would only have added another unnecessary complication to an already busy weekend.
At the same time, it appears highly unlikely that the wing will be used next weekend either. The British Grand Prix will feature the Sprint format, leaving teams with only a single practice session before competitive running begins. In such a restricted schedule, unless McLaren decides to carry out a very brief validation test ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix, it is difficult to imagine the team dedicating valuable practice time to an experimental component instead of focusing entirely on race preparation.
Before the start of the 2026 Formula 1 season, McLaren Chief Technical Officer Rob Marshall had already explained that the team intended to spend the opening races analysing the behaviour of the MCL40 while carefully studying the innovations introduced by rival teams before committing to its own long-term development direction.
During interviews given throughout the unexpected break caused by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, the Woking-based team also acknowledged that it considered Ferrari‘s pivoting rear wing concept particularly interesting. The postponed Austrian test therefore represents another step in McLaren’s effort to fully understand and refine a technology that could become an important part of its future aerodynamic development programme.
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