McLaren shelves 'Macarena' wing debut after failed tests

McLaren's answer to Ferrari and Red Bull's rotating rear wing missed its Austria debut, engineering director Neil Houldey explains why the team pulled the plug late.

McLaren has explained why its much-anticipated 'Macarena' rear wing failed to appear at the Austrian GP after all.

The Woking team had planned to evaluate its own version of the rotating low-drag rear wing concept already adopted by Ferrari and Red Bull, but the component never made it onto the car in Friday practice as planned.

Applied engineering director Neil Houldey has now revealed why.

"We were working hard at the factory just to get something that we could test and work on in the lab," he said.

"We managed to ship it, but once it arrived, we conducted further tests that we knew we needed to do to validate it before it could run. Unfortunately, it didn't pass the tests we needed to complete, so we sent it back and will delay its introduction."

Houldey admitted the setback was disappointing after the effort invested by the factory.

"We'll try to use it once we've sorted out what needs to be sorted," he said.

"It's disappointing for everyone at the factory given the effort they've put in, but it was actually the right decision because we needed to run with the car that would continue throughout the weekend."

McLaren snapshot

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Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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