F1 | Spain brings technical reckoning, but teams remain in denial. F1 teams await the Spanish GP hoping McLaren will lose performance.

Between the Formula 1 teams and the Federation, there is constant communication, involving reports, accusations, and inspections. When a team finds performance, all the others look for its secrets, which often lie in grey areas of the regulations—not illegal, just exploiting what is left unsaid, reading between the lines. And when this happens, the others can only lick their wounds. However, the FIA doesn’t like being mocked so publicly either, or having to admit it left loopholes, and sometimes steps in with technical directives to patch things up along the way.

At Imola, two of these directives are said to have arrived—one regarding the skid pad and another about the tyres—but everyone is waiting for the one on flexible wings, which will debut at the Spanish GP. This one would shut down McLaren’s trick, in which wings are built to pass static tests but behave differently on track, better exploiting aerodynamics. Several teams designed their 2025 cars with the same idea until the FIA, earlier this year, forced them to backtrack. Now, everyone will have to bring new wings to Barcelona, and there’s tension in the air to see if performance changes.

“You won’t gain eight tenths”

Obviously, the top teams are expecting a sharp drop in McLaren’s performance—so much so that they’ve kept a development window open based on the result of the Spanish GP. Everyone is convinced that things will drastically change, but the only one who seems to see through the fog is Max Verstappen, who said bluntly during a media session in Imola: “There won’t be a jump of eight tenths.” On the contrary, drivers and team principals are hoping to magically become front-runners while the Woking team fades into the midfield. That’s certainly a possibility, but a remote one.

Instead, it seems everyone is anxiously looking to this round to delay facing the truth—that it’s not just the flexible wing that makes the MCL39 fast. Perhaps it’s easier than admitting they weren’t clever enough, or worse, that they got the design wrong. But once the veil of Maya falls, they’ll have to face the harsh reality.