McLaren Pulls New Rear Wing After Austria Test Fail

McLaren scrapped plans to run its new experimental rear wing at the Austrian Grand Prix after final approval checks in the garage showed the part was not performing as expected, forcing the team to abandon its practice test before track action began.

The team had intended to use the new inverted rear wing on Lando Norris’ car from the start of first practice, while Oscar Piastri remained on the older specification to give McLaren a direct back-to-back comparison. That programme was dropped before FP1 when the component was withdrawn.

The wing was McLaren’s version of the "Macarena" or "flip-flop" concept already introduced earlier this season by Ferrari and Red Bull. Piastri had said before the weekend that it would only be used in practice and only on Norris’ car, underlining that Spielberg was meant to be an evaluation run rather than a race debut.

Neil Houldey, McLaren technical director, said the team had pushed hard to get the part to Austria but could not sign it off for use. “Unfortunately, we were not able to use the experimental wing that we brought here,” Houldey said. “During the final approval tests in the garage, it did not perform as expected and we did not feel comfortable using it.”

That left McLaren with no reason to split its programme across two specifications, so it used its track time to work only on the package it already knew. Houldey said that was the correct choice for the weekend, even if it meant losing the chance to gather early circuit data on a highly anticipated development.

He said the factory had worked intensely to prepare the wing and get it to Spielberg because McLaren saw Austria as a strong opportunity to test it. Instead, the part will go back for more work before the team considers bringing it to a future Grand Prix, leaving McLaren to focus on extracting performance from its existing package for now.