McLaren to Test ‘Upside-Down’ Rear Wing at Austrian Grand Prix

McLaren Joins Rear-Wing Development Race

McLaren will bring its own ‘upside-down’ rear wing to Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix, becoming the latest front-running team to explore a concept that has already attracted attention through Ferrari and Red Bull.

That makes Friday’s running particularly significant. McLaren is expected to use practice to compare the new solution against its standard rear wing, giving the team a first meaningful read on whether the concept can translate into useful performance on its own car. For more on the wider context around the Spielberg weekend, see our Austrian Grand Prix talking points.

Ferrari Sparked the Trend

Although Ferrari’s version made an immediate visual impression in testing, it was not raced until the Miami Grand Prix. Red Bull then introduced its own interpretation at the same event, turning what initially looked like an isolated Ferrari experiment into a design direction worth monitoring.

McLaren’s decision to trial its own version therefore reflects a familiar Formula 1 pattern: once a rival concept appears both legal and potentially useful, it becomes part of the wider development conversation.

Marshall: McLaren Looks at Everything

McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall had already identified Ferrari’s rear wing as one of the ideas that caught his eye earlier in the campaign. Speaking at McLaren’s Woking factory in April, he said: “Everyone saw that and thought, ‘oh, okay, yeah, that's all right. But [are] we sure that's legal?’ Yeah, it is! Okay.”

Marshall also explained that McLaren routinely evaluates rival solutions, though not every idea survives beyond initial analysis. Some concepts are ruled out by regulations, others by the architecture of a team’s own car or engine-related constraints.

“We kind of look at everything,” he said. “Some things go as far as being wind tunnel tested or CFD tested. Others are more kind of thought experiments we do on them to see whether we think that they would be good or bad for us.”

Crucially, Marshall rejected the simplistic notion that copying never works in F1. While not every idea transfers cleanly between cars, he argued some concepts can deliver broadly applicable gains, citing the double diffuser example as proof that one team’s breakthrough can become everyone’s opportunity.