Lewis Hamilton believes that the clampdown on wing flexing is proving to be nothing more than a waste of money.
Introduced in three stages, the latest phase of the clampdown comes this weekend, and has produced no perceivable difference to performance or the pecking order.
McLaren, which almost since the beginning of its turnaround has been the subject of speculation – yet consistently cleared of any wrongdoing – brought no updates to Barcelona, while every one of its rivals had a revised front wing in order to meet the latest technical directive.
While it had been thought that some, like Ferrari, might benefit, thus far there has been no real change.
“What a waste of money,” laughed Lewis Hamilton after qualifying fifth. “The balance is definitely not as nice as what we had before, but it hasn’t made any… it’s just wasted everyone’s money.
“It’s literally changed nothing,” he added. “Everyone’s wings still bend, which is half the bending, and everyone’s had to make new wings and spend more money to make these.
“It doesn’t make sense, but it is what it is and we just continue on.”
“We should be giving it to charity,” he subsequently added, referring to the money spent to comply with the rules.
Speaking at the start of the weekend, the Ferrari driver opined that flexing wings had “been a positive,” and F1 was going “in the wrong direction” by restricting their use.
Asked at that time if he was expecting a difference in the drivability of the car, he said: “No, I wasn’t expecting… I drove on the simulator and it was pretty much exactly the same. Just a little bit more oversteering in the high speeds.”
Meanwhile, doing his best not to smile, Andrea Stella said he was always confident that the clampdown would have no impact, indeed the McLarens appear to have widened the gap this weekend.
“In terms of the impact of the front wing modifications, I think it unfolded pretty much like we at McLaren were expecting,” he told reporters. “We always thought that the impact would be relatively negligible because when we saw the numbers associated to this change of aeroelastic effect, they were small numbers in terms of downforce, and in terms of the variation of the downforce with speed.
“When we tested this wing in Imola, if we hadn’t told Lando that it was a different wing, he wouldn’t have spotted it,” he added. “And when we simulated in the simulator or in the offline simulation, numerically, it was almost at zero.
“So we were not expecting a change of the pecking order, a function of the technical directive that was released for this race.”
Check out our Saturday gallery from Barcelona here.
