Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said they could have considered a protest over McLaren’s rear wing design.
McLaren has since confirmed it will change the design of its rear wing following questions over its legality after video footage from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix showed it deforming under high loads.
Vasseur said the question of the design’s legality was “more than borderline.” The rear wing appeared to help McLaren maximise their top speed in a race where Oscar Piastri held Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc back to win.
The FIA previously began studying the behaviour of teams’ front wings in order to ensure they were not flexing excessively at high speed. However Vasseur believes McLaren’s rear wing was obviously deflecting to improve its performance.
“I think there is a kind of confusion between what’s happened with the front wing and the rear wing,” he said. “The front wing, we all agree that it could be a grey area because in the [technical directive], the first paragraph of the TD is saying that you can’t design part of the car with the intention of the deformation. Intention is difficult to manage.
“The rear wing story is completely different because on the article you have also a maximum deflection. And this is black or white. It’s not grey, dark grey, light grey – it’s black and [white] for me, it’s clear.”
Asked whether Ferrari could have protested McLaren’s car had they realised how its wing was behaving sooner, Vasseur said: “It could have been possible, but it’s not so easy to have evidence.
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“Now, honestly, I want to turn this page because I want to be focused on the future. Baku and Monza are behind us. We have still seven races to go. We have to win this weekend and it will be the best reply that we can give.”
The FIA stated yesterday that all wings which met their deflection tests were considered legal. Although McLaren potentially gained a benefit from running the design before agreeing to change it, Vasseur does not believe Ferrari missed a trick by not being as aggressive as their rivals were with their aerodynamics.
“Honestly, we are pushing at the limit of what we are considering legal, I can’t ask the team to overshoot this limit,” he said.
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