Explained: The expected impact from McLaren’s upgraded F1 front wing

McLaren have explained the expected benefit of their upgraded front wing at the F1 Austrian Grand Prix.

The British squad was one of only a few teams to update their 2024 challenger for this weekend’s race at the Red Bull Ring.

McLaren hope the new front wing will improve the low-speed behaviour of the MCL38 and boost their ongoing bid to challenge Red Bull.

“The focus is to keep the development direction that we introduced trackside with the front wing we took to Miami,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told media including Crash.net in Austria. 

“We saw that that concept worked well, so we wanted to pursue further this direction, and this is another attempt to improve, in particular, the low-speed behaviour of the car.”

McLaren are confident the updated front wing can bring low-speed gains without negatively impacting their high-speed performance.

“Especially with this generation of cars, and this generation of front wing regulations, the geometries are very restricted,” Stella added.

“It is very difficult to achieve what you want at your speed - at high-speed angles for instance - or what you want in a straight line or what you want in high-speed.

“This is a challenge that I’m sure all teams are facing and that’s also why it’s quite difficult to bring development on a front wing.

“So hopefully the compromise we are working on is capable of delivering some low-speed benefit but without affecting the high-speed or the straight lines too negatively.”

As well as the new front wing, McLaren have also debuted new suspension fairings.

“The suspension is just the fairings, just the shrouds,” Stella explained.

“When you change the front wing it changes slightly the flow that goes to the back of the car and so you need to optimise the components downstream for the slight variation in the flow topology.

“This is very normal, I think I see more and more when teams bring a front wing upgrade they also then upgrade brake ducts and suspension shrouds. That’s purely aerodynamics.”