For the second weekend in a row, one of the more interesting technical nuances from the Singapore Grand Prix revolved around McLaren and its rear wing choice.
But rather than this being a controversial talking point like in Baku, as attention was grabbed by its ‘mini-DRS’, instead the fascinating element of last week was about it bucking the trend with its downforce levels.
While the rest of the field took the conventional approach of fitting its cars with their highest downforce selection, McLaren was alone in not doing it – it went a step down on downforce.
This was a decision that the team seemingly settled into early on in the weekend too.
McLaren split its car from the off. Oscar Piastri went for the max downforce arrangement in FP1, before switching to the step-down level that Lando Norris had run from the start.
As its opponents wrestled their machinery around the Singapore street track with high downforce arrangements similar to what would be installed at Monaco and Hungary (inset), McLaren bridged the gap between downforce levels with an updated beam wing arrangement.
The new beam wing arrangement is still a bi-plane layout, with the lower, more loaded element retained.
The upper more slat-like element was increased in size to improve the relationship between the two elements and help create a stronger connection between them, the diffuser and rear wing.
The ‘mini-DRS’ controversy
McLaren’s rear wing was a big talking point heading into Singapore, with footage from the rear-facing onboard camera of Oscar Piastri’s MCL38 in Baku showing distortion in the slot gap between the mainplane and upper flap.
This opening up of the gap between wing elements would help reduce drag and increase straight-line speed.
While McLaren is not the only team to be employing flexibility in its rear wing to reduce drag, the means by which McLaren was doing so was a new method from what we’ve seen in the past.
In this instance, there was a secondary effect, whereby the leading edge of the upper flap flexes upwards, which is most visible in the front corners of the flap (red arrow, above).
This ‘mini-DRS’, as it quickly became dubbed, was expected to provide a top speed boost when compared with its rivals – although just how much was not clear.
The wing passed the FIA regulations with the static load tests but, following pressure from rivals, McLaren agreed with the governing body to make modifications to this low-downforce specification for when it potentially reappears at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Red Bull’s minor tweaks
Red Bull has been on the backfoot of late, as the RB20 has failed to deliver the level of performance that had been anticipated.
Updates that arrived during the season have further narrowed the car’s working window.
And, whilst the team now seemingly understands where things went wrong in terms of the development cycle, the fixes won’t be available overnight.
Regardless of its long-term solutions, it also has to focus its efforts on improving the car on a race-by-race basis and as such, it modified its front brake assembly for the Singapore Grand Prix.
This was an effort to both help improve brake cooling and alter the transmission of heat between the brakes and tyres, via the wheel rim.
This is the type of small detail change that we’ve seen teams make for a number of years but is less obvious with this generation of car. That is because the outermost brake drum must be sealed, rather than having the openings that many used for aerodynamic effects during previous regulatory eras.
In the case of this new arrangement on the RB20, the design of the inner basket has been altered to include a trench-like cutout, with a window around a portion of the brake disc, which also has a metal component, which may act as a heatsink.
The arrangement that’s being employed will reroute heat generated by the brakes around the assembly and out the rear-facing duct that’s mounted on the inboard face of the brake duct fence.
Ferrari’s new front wing
Meanwhile, there was a new front wing on the menu for Ferrari in Singapore, as it looked to further capitalise on the performance uplift that its recent floor updates have provided in the last few races.
Originally scheduled for the United States Grand Prix and fast-tracked for Singapore, it is understood that Ferrari put more of it's focus on the wing’s flexibility under load, with rivals McLaren and Mercedes having seemingly made significant gains having focused on its potential.
This has resulted in several alterations being made to the front wing’s architecture, with the change made to the outboard flap and endplate juncture perhaps the most prominent of these features.
It has taken a very similar approach to McLaren here, as the MCL38’s wing sports a more aggressively dog-eared semi-detached flap design in order to help tune the vortex that’s spilt in that outer corner and had an impact on the wake generated by the wheel assembly thereafter.
The shape and distribution of the flaps have also been adjusted to better suit the aforementioned shift in outboard characteristics, whilst also taking into account how more flexion will have a bearing on its performance from both a downforce and drag perspective.
Notably, there’s also a change to the shape of the central section of the mainplane, with the depth and transitional shape of the drooped section amended.
