Ferrari dramatically ditched its revolutionary ‘Macarena’ rear wing following practice for Formula 1‘s Chinese Grand Prix as Lewis Hamilton admitted the upgrade was ‘rushed’.
The unexpected U-turn was confirmed just hours after Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton clocked respectable but uncompetitive fifth and sixth in the sole Friday practice at Shanghai, suggesting it didn’t quite work as the team hoped.
The ‘Macarena’ rear wing, so named by team principal Fred Vasseur for its hypnotic, dance-like 180-degree rotation that flips the main plane upside down on straights to slash drag and boost top speeds by up to 8 km/h, had generated massive pre-event hype as Ferrari’s potential silver bullet against Mercedes’ early-season dominance.
Ferrari first unveiled the audacious design during Bahrain pre-season testing, capturing on-board footage showing the rear wing element pivoting fluidly around its axis to transform from a downforce-generating beast in corners into a near-lift-producing arrow on the straights.
While Hamilton ran the conventional wing for just five laps on the penultimate day of testing, Ferrari opted to run the traditional DRS-style design at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
The team was reported to be working on an updated specification set to be introduced at the Canadian Grand Prix in May.
However, after the SF-26 finished a frustrating third and fourth behind Mercedes’ George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in Melbourne, the Scuderia seem to have fast tracked the upgrade to this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Ferrari reportedly brought three specifications of the wing to Shanghai, in bid to counter Mercedes’ power unit edge ahead of the looming FIA compression ratio rule change in June set to neutralize some of the German marque’s early advantages.
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The ‘Macarena’ rear wing was run by both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc throughout Friday’s practice in Shanghai, but the experiment was short lived as the team returned to the conventional wing for Sprint qualifying.
Racetrackmasters believes Ferrari didn’t want to take the risk of running the wing during a whole race due to uncertainties over performance and reliability. It was apparent the design didn’t yield any performance gains as Hamilton and Leclerc finished P5 and P6.
Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz confirmed what had happened live on air as he spoke just seconds before the start of Sprint qualifying.
“We’re all excited about the innovative Ferrari ‘Macarena’ rear wing, we’re all feting their ideas kitchen and how it’s all going so well,” Kravitz said. “So it was inevitable, wasn’t it, that they’d take it off? They aren’t running it for the rest of the weekend.
“Not because they don’t think it will be better in a straight line, not because they don’t think it gives them 5kph advantage over their competitors by dumping more drag than their rivals, but because they’re not sure that it’s reliable enough to make it through the rest of the weekend.”
Hamilton later candidly admitted the design was “a little premature” and the team had “rushed” homologation.
“I don’t really know why we went back on it,” he said. “We rushed it to get it here and it was not supposed to be on the cars until I think it was like race four or five or something like that.
“They did a great job to rush it here, and we only had two of them and it was maybe a little bit premature, so we took it off. The car was still great. We’ll work to try and bring it back when it’s ready.”
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