Formula 1’s upcoming flexi wing technical directive will make “no difference” to McLaren, but Zak Brown appreciates that the saga has “distracted” McLaren’s rivals.

Flexible wings emerged as one of the hot topics in last year’s championship as rivals accused one another of running flexi front wings, that said to be the trick to Mercedes’ Monaco gains, while rear wings came to the fore later in the campaign.

Will McLaren be hamstrung by TD018?

Rear-facing footage from Oscar Piastri’s McLaren as he held off Charles Leclerc at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed a mini-DRS opening on the straights.

The upper flap of Piastri’s rear wing notably pivoted upwards, opening a small gap in the DRS flap that effectively dumped extra drag and generated greater straight-line speed.

McLaren tweaked the design of their rear wings after talks with the FIA, but that did little to silence the complaints, prompting the FIA to issue a revised technical directive, TD018, to the teams ahead of the F1 2025 season.

But while stricter rear wing tests were introduced at the very beginning of the campaign, new tests for the front wings were delayed until the Spanish Grand Prix.

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That race is now on the horizon, part three of the upcoming triple-header that begins later this month with Imola.

Rival teams believe McLaren and Mercedes could be the hardest hit, although Red Bull team boss Christian Horner concedes every team will be affected to some extent.

“I think for sure it’s going to have an effect,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “Now how much it affects your competitors versus you is difficult to predict, but for sure, it’s a significant change.

“I mean, it’s not just a tweak, so it will affect all of the cars. It’s just to what quantum.”

Brown, though, stands by his claim that it won’t hurt McLaren, who have been the dominant force this season.

The Woking team has won five of six Grands Prix as well as the Sprint at the Miami Grand Prix to lead both championship races. Piastri is 16 points clear of Lando Norris in a McLaren 1-2 in the Drivers’ standings while McLaren are 105 points up on Mercedes in the teams’ standings.

If anything, Brown believes the upcoming TD has benefitted McLaren as it has kept their rivals distracted.

“That makes no difference to us,” he insisted when asked about the TD during an interview with De Telegraaf. “We are not worried at all about that rule change.

“In recent times, there have been many suggestions from others about our car. And none of it was accurate.

“But the more they are distracted and focused on our car rather than their own performance, that’s a good thing.”

Championship leader Piastri has also downplayed the looming TD, the Australian confident that McLaren’s MCL39 will be “strong” all season, even after Spain.

“I’m pretty confident we’ll be strong all year,” Piastri said last month. “I don’t think it’ll change too much.

“I’ve not spoken to the team about it massively in all honestly, which probably tells you enough about that.

“Let’s see when we get to Spain.”

He added: “I think we’ll be a strong team all year.”

One person who is interested in seeing how the technical directive plays out is Max Verstappen’s father, Jos.

Watching on as his son risks losing the World title to McLaren, as his deficit to Piastri is already 32 points, the former F1 driver is annoyed that the FIA made the call to only introduce the clampdown at round nine instead of at the beginning of the campaign.

“We’ll see what happens,” Jos told Racexpress. “But then suddenly there is a rule change around the wings… Then I think, ‘do that at the beginning of the year, then it’s the same for everyone’.

“But why after so many races, and then it’s no longer allowed?

“Then they have benefited from it until then. I think that’s so stupid, but that’s part of it, I think.”

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