From the moment the 2025 Formula One season began, McLaren’s MCL39 has been the quickest out of all ten cars. Many people believed that it was, in a big part, due to its flexible front wing. A new Technical Directive connected to that part of the car has been introduced during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend. Did it manage to nullify the advantage held by the British team?
Following the Belgian Grand Prix in 2024, cameras had been installed on the cars. Data gathered from those cameras revealed that load tests applied to the front wing would need to be toughened. This could pose an issue for teams who built their wing to be very flexible, and were therefore gaining an advantage when the wing flexed under load.
The need to make the tests stricter was identified before the beginning of the 2025 season. The FIA still decided not to introduce the new technical directive before the Australian Grand Prix.
“That conclusion was arrived at quite late in the year, however, and we felt that if we had introduced extra tests at the start of this season, it would have been tough on teams and may have led to existing front wings being scrapped, and extra expense,” explained Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA single-seater director.
Many people believed that out of all the teams, it was McLaren that gained the most by using the flexible front wing. They were able to use it to help the car in both slow-speed corners and high-speed corners.
McLaren has been the team to beat since the very beginning of the season. The fans of all other teams hoped that taking away their front wing advantage would help level the playing field. The theory would be tested during the qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.
To the utter joy of all McLaren fans, the team still dominated. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris were never far from the top of the leaderboards. They never had to worry about making it through to the next round of qualifying. The fight for pole position happened only between the two of them. In the end, it was Piastri who came out on top.
For now, the introduction of the new technical directive did not change things up quite as much as some fans hoped it would. It remains to be seen what impact it will have on the race pace of the top teams. Could McLaren lose out on Sunday, despite dominating on Saturday?
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