McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown is “loving the front wings”, a cheeky nod to rivals following an impressive one-two at the Spanish Grand Prix.

The Woking squad continued their march towards what already looks set to be back-to-back Constructors’ Championship titles, on a race weekend where Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris also took a sizeable step away from Max Verstappen in the title fight, all amid the backdrop of a new FIA Technical Directive.

Zak Brown ‘loving the front wings’ after McLaren Spanish GP one-two

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

While Formula 1’s governing body the FIA moved to implement more stringent tests on rear wing flexing ahead of the F1 2025 campaign, it was not until the Spanish Grand Prix – Round 9 of the season – that similar tests were brought into force for the front wings too.

McLaren, with their ‘mini-DRS’ solution, found themselves as one of the teams in the spotlight when F1’s flexi-wing debate reignited last season, and as a fresh Technical Directive came into play for Spain, all eyes were on the pecking order to see if change was afoot.

But, that did not prove to be the case. Oscar Piastri took pole and raced on to a fifth win of the season, while Lando Norris converted P2 on the grid into a McLaren one-two.

The more things change, the more they stay the same perhaps rings true in Formula 1 after that new TD was put into action, and Brown could not resist a cheeky social media post to rub a little further salt in the wound of their rivals.

“Mega drive from Oscar & Lando,” Brown began on X.

“1-2 it doesn’t get much better than that! Great strategy and pit stops.”

“Big thanks to everyone back home. Loving the front wings.”

Brown signed-off that post with a grinning emoji, and there is every reason for McLaren to be smiling following the Spanish Grand Prix.

The team are now 197 points clear at the top of the Constructors’ Championship standings, while Piastri and Norris can see some daylight between themselves and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ classification.

Piastri leads the way with Norris 10 points behind, but Verstappen is now 39 adrift of Norris after a P10 finish in Spain, that as a result of a 10-second time penalty for his controversial collision with George Russell in the closing stages.

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And something which surprised McLaren team principal Andrea Stella during the Spanish Grand Prix was just how “in parallel” Piastri and Norris were throughout the race.

Following a late Safety Car period and restart, Piastri took the win by two and a half seconds over Norris.

Asked by the media, including PlanetF1.com, if running behind Piastri in the opening stint took energy out of Norris’ tyres, Stella replied: “Yes, you do have to use your tyres more because you are following, and when you are in following, aerodynamics reduces, so you have to extract from the tyres what you lose from an aerodynamic point of view.

“Which could be easily like half a second that you extract more from the tyres.

“So I think yes, more prior consumption for Lando in the first stint.

“But overall, I have to say that the two drivers today were, in a way, quite surprisingly, pretty much going in parallel throughout the entire race. And I think Oscar has done a really impressive job, considering that last year, this was one of the most difficult races for him, so he’s gone really a long way forward in 12 months.”

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