George Russell sarcastically joked that the FIA’s newest technical directive, TD018, “clearly slowed McLaren down”, after all, they were only P1 in both Friday practices in Spain.

Formula 1 introduced a revised technical directive at round nine of the F1 2025 championship, Barcelona, one aimed at eradicating flexible front wings.

TD018’s impact? What impact?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Introducing more stringent static load tests to ensure compliance with the regulations, some rivals had suggested the TD would turn F1’s pecking order on its head and potentially eradicate McLaren‘s on-track advantage.

“For sure, everybody will have a new front wing in Barcelona, by definition and by regulation. I think it will be perhaps a reset of the performance of everybody,” predicted Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner added: “For sure it’s going to have an effect. Now how much it affects your competitors’ [performance] versus your own, it’s difficult to predict.

“But for sure it’s a significant change. It’s not just a tweak. So it will affect all of the cars, it’s just to what quantum.”

Friday’s timesheets in Barcelona belied their predictions.

Spanish GP: Closer look at TD018

👉 McLaren telemetry data delivers blow to rivals as flexi-wings TD arrives

👉 Explaining F1’s phantom updates and why McLaren do have a new front wing after all

McLaren claimed the double in Friday’s practices, with Oscar Piastri finishing quickest of all with a 1:12.760 that put him almost three-tenths ahead of second-placed Russell.

Max Verstappen finished the day third fastest and said he never thought the TD would have much of an impact anyway.

“I mean, if you look at the standings, not a lot,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com, when asked for his assessment of the TD’s impact after practice. “But for my side, that was also not really expected.”

Also quizzed on the technical directive’s impact, Russell sarcastically quipped that it had “clearly” impacted McLaren’s pace.

“It’s clearly slowed McLaren down a lot! So yeah, good news!” he said.

But while the technical directive may not have had the impact that some predicted, talk of it being significant and a gamechanger failing to fruition, Russell is at least happy that Mercedes had a good Friday after two difficult weekends in Imola and Monaco.

“In the quali runs, we looked pretty decent, so it was nice to be back where the car has been after some tough races,” he said.

“Nevertheless, the long-run pace doesn’t look superb, and that has been an objective of ours recently to try and improve the long-run pace.

“So we need to go through the data, we need to compare how we fill out compared to our rivals, but definitely the long-run pace is a small concern.”

Read next: Nico Rosberg takes aim at F1 drivers over ‘blah, blah, blah’ response to key Spanish GP change