Brown: Flexible rear wing not McLaren’s ‘secret sauce’

McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown has downplayed the controversy surrounding the team’s flexible rear wing, which came under scrutiny following Oscar Piastri’s win at the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Despite the uproar from rival teams, Brown insisted that the aero element was not the "secret sauce" behind McLaren’s recent success, as some have suggested.

Piastri’s win in Baku turned heads, particularly due to his remarkable straight-line speed, which allowed him to pass Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and then hold off the Ferrari driver for over a dozen laps.

Post-race footage on social media footage the upper element of the rear wing flexing under load to produce a ‘mini DRS’ effect as it was labeled, sparking concerns that it could be offering an unfair advantage.

Several teams – notably Red Bull and Ferrari – raised the issue with the FIA, leading to an investigation. But at the following event in Singapore, McLaren agreed to modify its car’s rear wing component to ease its rivals’ concerns.

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However, in an interview with The Times, Brown insisted that the modification will have minimal impact on its car’s performance.

“Whoever’s winning, everyone’s always staring at the car to understand what they’re doing,” the McLaren chief explained.

“It’s totally natural that people are staring at our car at the moment and then coming to conclusions, a lot of them incorrectly.

“We’ve passed every single test. We offered to make a small modification, just because we don’t think it will make much of a difference and there’s a lot of noise around it.

“So, to demonstrate that there’s no secret sauce, we were like, ‘Well, we’ll modify it slightly.’”

McLaren's rivals, Brown noted, are simply doing what any competitive team would do—scrutinizing the top car on the grid.

“They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they weren’t making noise,” he said. “It’s a compliment that people are looking at our car and challenging. We’ve got good innovation on our car.”

Ahead of next week’s US Grand Prix, McLaren are comfortably leading the Constructors’ Championship by 41 points from Red Bull Racing.

Thanks to its overall innovation and hard work, the Woking-based outfit is on track to secure its first world title since 1998.

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