McLaren pulls new wing after Canada sprint doubts

McLaren reverted both MCL40s to their previous front-wing specification before sprint qualifying in Canada after a single practice session left Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri short of confidence in the updated package and the team unsure why its track behavior was not matching simulation.

The front wing was part of the second stage of McLaren’s latest upgrade package at the Canadian Grand Prix, alongside a revised engine cover, rear suspension fairings and floor edges. But the sprint format in Montreal gave the team only one hour of practice to judge the changes, and that session offered little clean comparison on a Circuit Gilles Villeneuve surface that started the weekend green and evolved quickly for grip.

That made the wing especially difficult to read. Norris ran the new specification throughout practice, while Piastri began on the previous version before switching over, leaving McLaren with limited representative data before parc ferme. Norris said the drivers “didn’t have much confidence in the car” with the new wing fitted.

After the race, Norris said McLaren was not giving up on the part, but needed to understand it better first. “We need to just make sure it works properly next time,” the McLaren driver said. “It’s not a guarantee we’re going to run it in Monaco, but we’ll do tests to see if we can make it work better.”

Team principal Andrea Stella said the uncertainty was not simply about outright pace. McLaren had seen “some element of deviation from an aerodynamic point of view” between what it expected and what the car delivered on track. “So we’ve tested the wing. We want to repeat some testing and gain some further information,” Stella said.

Stella added that on a circuit like Montreal, the new wing “would have been better, but it wouldn’t have been a game changer,” which made the risk of committing to it on a sprint weekend harder to justify. Norris also pointed to Gilles Villeneuve as an outlier, where braking confidence, turn-in confidence and the ability to attack the kerbs aggressively matter heavily.

That is why McLaren’s decision in Canada looks more like a pause than a retreat. The team wants more evidence before racing the new design, and Stella made clear the evaluation will continue at the next stop by saying: “So we will definitely see this wing again in Monaco.”