McLaren Formula 1 tech director Neil Houldey admits the squad was "disappointed" not to pick up on the upside down rear wing concept as quickly as pioneering Ferrari, as the team continues developing its own version for adoption after the summer break.
Innovation comes in all shapes and sizes, as F1 teams sink their teeth into a brand-new rulebook in 2026. Some design interpretations are more visible than others, so when Ferrari debuted a striking rear wing in Bahrain testing that rotated 180 degrees between corner mode and straight mode, it captured the imagination – not just of fans, but also of rival designers who then had to go back to the drawing board to figure out whether or not they had missed a trick to reduce straight line drag.
Red Bull Racing has since rolled out its own version, but one that follows a different concept, and had to revise it after two incidents for Max Verstappen in Austria and Silverstone.
McLaren was next, but it too had to do plenty of tweaking to get the design to work as intended. A planned test in Austria practice had to be abandoned after the team uncovered issues in the garage. Following further development, it trialled the rear wing to good effect in Hungary as a test item, expecting to debut the design after the shutdown.
McLaren tech director Houldey said the Woking squad realised it had left something on the table as soon as it saw Ferrari trial the design in winter testing.
"We were disappointed not to pick that up as quickly as Ferrari did and then Red Bull," Houldey said when asked by Motorsport.com about the team's initial reaction to Ferrari's innovative design. "As soon as we saw it, we realised there was an opportunity there and we looked into it for a while.
"But there are all these big performance upgrades on offer for the wing, so it wasn't our prime project, and we were working on it in the background. We did lab testing, brought it to FP1 in Austria, and we found an issue with it in the garage, so we took it back to the factory.
"We think we've now found a concept that works and we've created a reliable solution. We understand some of the aerodynamic risks with doing it."
Verstappen's two frightening spins in Austria and Silverstone, triggered by Red Bull's first iteration of the rear wing not closing as quickly as expected, and therefore leading to a delay delivering the expected downforce levels, further underlined that the rotating rear wing concept is not easy to get right, and carries risks that need to be properly understood.
"It's the fact that the activation time might be slightly longer, the fact that it takes a little bit more time for the aerodynamic load to come back when you reactivate," Houldey explained, as he confirmed McLaren's design is still on course for making it onto the race car in the near future. McLaren in particular is chasing better aerodynamic efficiency, which the rear wing could contribute to.
"We looked at it whilst developing rear wings for performance, generally," Houldey said. "We're now trying to find a way of introducing that concept into our new rear wing generation, which should be happening in the next few races."
