McLaren failed to show respect for the rules and damaged Red Bull’s Constructors’ Championship challenge with their “more than grey” area rear wing.

That is the claim made by Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache, who took aim at McLaren’s ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing as the team go into the Abu Dhabi F1 2024 season finale looking to secure their first Constructors’ title since 1998.

‘More than grey’ McLaren rear wing damaged Red Bull

After a dominant start to the season for Red Bull, McLaren emerged as a serious threat, to the point that Red Bull can no longer retain their Constructors’ title this year as McLaren and Ferrari battle for that honour in Abu Dhabi instead.

And a key storyline in the McLaren versus Red Bull battle was the ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing uncovered thanks to onboard footage of Oscar Piastri’s McLaren in Baku, where he took the win ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

With the rear wing lower and upper element seen parting slightly to dump drag down the straights, McLaren insisted the rear wing was legal but “proactively” offered to change it after talks with governing body the FIA.

But, Wache is far from convinced regarding McLaren rear wing’s legality and with Red Bull out of the Constructors’ title race, it represents a bitter pill to swallow.

Claiming “what you want is a playing field the same for everybody”, as Red Bull “play with this playing field”, Wache continued to RN365: “I think it’s so difficult to develop that I think some grey areas are so attractive as an engineer.

“When you see the rear wing of McLaren, I’m sorry, but it’s more than grey, and they use it for multiple races. Because, without that, Baku, they will not win. Even our Constructors’ Championship will be completely different.”

But, is that McLaren innovation a frustration, or rather of interest to Wache as an engineer?

He replied: “I don’t dismiss that. Just as an engineer, you also have to respect the rules. In terms of technical regulations, the difference compared to sporting [regulations] is you have to prove that you are legal.

“When you have a radar camera between two points, the police can see you only at these two points and you can go at very high speed between, if you don’t have average speed [checks]. The technical regulations are different – you have to prove that you are correct.

“It’s part of the game, but you also have some limits. If the police doesn’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s legal. What happened to Ferrari in the past and everything, that more than the limit. It’s frustrating for us, when the police doesn’t do their job.”

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Ferrari were also highly sceptical of that McLaren rear wing, believing it surpassed the stage of blurring the lines between legal and illegal.

“We have to give the responsibility of the scrutineering to the FIA, it’s not my job to do it,” Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur explained in Singapore. “They have to do it, and we have to trust them honestly.

“I’m not complaining about this, I think it’s more than borderline. We all saw the video and the picture of this, and it’s a bit frustrating when, if you remember perfectly the situation in Monza, we had five cars in two hundredths of seconds, and you move from P1, P2 to P5, P6 for two hundredths of seconds.

“In Baku, we arrive 10 laps in a row side by side [at] Turn 1. But you can imagine that we have a bit of frustration.”

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