How McLaren’s rear wing choice again caught attention in Singapore

For the second weekend in a row, one of the more interesting technical nuances from the Singapore Grand Prix revolved around McLaren and its rear wing choice.

But rather than this being a controversial talking point like in Baku, as attention was grabbed by its ‘mini-DRS’, instead the fascinating element of last week was about it bucking the trend with its downforce levels.

While the rest of the field took the conventional approach of fitting its cars with their highest downforce selection, McLaren was alone in not doing it – it went a step down on downforce.

This was a decision that the team seemingly settled into early on in the weekend too.

McLaren split its car from the off. Oscar Piastri went for the max downforce arrangement in FP1, before switching to the step-down level that Lando Norris had run from the start.

As its opponents wrestled their machinery around the Singapore street track with high downforce arrangements similar to what would be installed at Monaco and Hungary (inset), McLaren bridged the gap between downforce levels with an updated beam wing arrangement.

The new beam wing arrangement is still a bi-plane layout, with the lower, more loaded element retained.
The upper more slat-like element was increased in size to improve the relationship between the two elements and help create a stronger connection between them, the diffuser and rear wing. 

The ‘mini-DRS’ controversy

McLaren’s rear wing was a big talking point heading into Singapore, with footage from the rear-facing onboard camera of Oscar Piastri’s MCL38 in Baku showing distortion in the slot gap between the mainplane and upper flap.

This opening up of the gap between wing elements would help reduce drag and increase straight-line speed.

While McLaren is not the only team to be employing flexibility in its rear wing to reduce drag, the means by which McLaren was doing so was a new method from what we’ve seen in the past.

In this instance, there was a secondary effect, whereby the leading edge of the upper flap flexes upwards, which is most visible in the front corners of the flap (red arrow, above).

This ‘mini-DRS’, as it quickly became dubbed, was expected to provide a top speed boost when compared with its rivals – although just how much was not clear. 

The wing passed the FIA regulations with the static load tests but, following pressure from rivals, McLaren agreed…