McLaren have left the opening race of the 2025 Formula 1 season with their first victory of the campaign.
Lando Norris took the chequered flag ahead of Max Verstappen at the Australian Grand Prix to open up a seven-point advantage over the four-time world champion.
It should have been more comfortable given McLaren’s impressive race pace but multiple safety cars and some damage picked up on Norris’ car towards the end of the Grand Prix made things interesting.
Once Oscar Piastri overtook Verstappen after he made a mistake going into turn 11, his Red Bull was no match for the MCL39 and Liam Lawson was off the pace all weekend.
However, all eyes were on the cars during testing and the first race weekend of the season to see whether they adhered to the FIA’s regulations.
The FIA studied Ferrari and McLaren’s car after testing and now a report from De Telegraaf has shared more details about an upcoming rule change for the Chinese Grand Prix.
Red Bull expect new FIA rear wing change to negatively ‘affect’ McLaren
Going into the race in Melbourne, the FIA installed cameras on every team’s rear wings to see how much each rear wing flexed.
Specifically, the gap created by the DRS flap flexing at high speeds – colloquially known as a Mini DRS – was being monitored in Australia.
The FIA wasn’t happy to discover every team had found a workaround to their rules that meant they passed the inspection but the wings were still flexing.
A slot gap was initially allowed to flex two millimetres in Australia, but that has been reduced to 0.5 millimetres for the race in Shanghai.
A tolerance of 0.25 millimetres is being allowed for Sunday’s race given the lack of notice, but the FIA is moving quickly to clamp down before new front-wing rules are introduced in Spain.
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The report from De Telegraaf suggested that Red Bull insiders discovered the FIA was going to be working ‘more strictly’ before the race in Australia.
It’s also said to be one of the reasons why Helmut Marko believes Red Bull can close the gap to McLaren in Shanghai, knowing after Sunday’s race that a change might be coming.
They also said that ‘within Red Bull’ they believe the new rules will ‘certainly affect’ their competition and the team who race in papaya are their main target this year.
McLaren must improve strategy calls to main advantage over Red Bull
Andrea Stella – McLaren’s team principal – will hope the change to the rear wing flexibility rules doesn’t lose them too much performance.
However, it’s unlikely that any team wasn’t already pushing the limits when it came to these regulations and Red Bull had enough problems figuring out their optimum setup in Australia.
McLaren had some very difficult calls to make during the first race of 2025 with Norris and Piastri both gunning for victory.
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Jolyon Palmer questioned McLaren’s decisions from the pit wall and the early team orders Piastri received when he closed the gap to Norris might be slightly concerning for the Australian’s camp.
Norris has already opened up a 23-point gap over Piastri and if Verstappen does get a slight boost from McLaren’s car not being as efficient with these changes, then the 25-year-old will want early backing from the team that he’s their choice for the drivers’ championship.
If McLaren delay making a call on who is their number one driver for too long, it could open up an opportunity for Verstappen which is exactly what Red Bull will want.
