McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said their rivals have “distracted” themselves by focusing attention on the legality of his team’s rear wing.
The team agreed to make changes to its rear wing design after footage emerged of it flexing at high speed during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend.
The team stood to gain far less from the wing flexing at a track like Singapore, where the top speeds reached are significantly lower than at Baku, scene of last week’s race. Nonetheless, after Lando Norris put his McLaren on pole position for this weekend’s race, Stella insisted McLaren lost nothing by revising its wing.
“The effect is absolutely zero, I think we saw it today,” he told Sky after qualifying.
“For us it’s just good news that our competitors get distracted with these kind of things because it means they don’t focus on themselves. For us, it’s just an advantage.”
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur called McLaren’s rear wing “more than borderline” in its compliance with the rules. His opposite number at Red Bull, Christian Horner, also expressed doubts the FIA would allow McLaren to continue using it.
But Stella said “we are completely comfortable that this is a little bit of a red herring, that somebody is speaking up.”
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“The wing is legal,” he emphasised. “There’s no topic, really. I think it’s just a story, but it looks like everyone looks for some stories.
“That’s good, it’s good for us, we keep the focus on ourselves, our feet on the ground, keep delivering upgrades and that’s what we do. And then we talk on the track.”
After taking pole position, Norris said his car felt good from the moment it hit the track.
“We’ve been good all weekend,” he said. “Just struggled to progress much from practice into quali. We just found a good set-up there and stuck and didn’t really progress at all, really. I went only a touch quicker than what I did in FP3.
“So I expected a bit more and probably found it a little bit more difficult than I would have liked in both Q1, Q2 and Q3. But the car’s been amazing all weekend so it felt good and felt comfortable just to go out and put the lap in.”
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2024 Singapore Grand Prix
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