Why Ferrari shelves innovative “Macarena” SF26 rear wing after Shanghai trial. Ferrari tested its innovative “Macarena” rear wing during FP1 in Shanghai.

After bringing it to China at the last moment and testing it during Free Practice 1, the rear wing nicknamed “Macarena” will no longer be used this weekend. The team still needs more time to refine it. Lewis Hamilton, however, praised the effort from the Maranello squad: “It was great that they managed to bring it early. The car was still fantastic. We will use it when it’s ready.”

The race against time to have the rear wing known internally as the “Macarena” – a nickname given by Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur – ready for use ultimately proved ineffective, as the component is not expected to appear again during this weekend. Yet that conclusion is only partly true.

Ferrari tested the wing, which rotates its profile by 270 degrees, during the only free practice session of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend at the Shanghai circuit. The intention was likely to evaluate whether it was already capable of delivering the performance gains expected for the SF-26 cars driven by Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

After the session, however, the Maranello team removed the new component from both cars, choosing instead to rely on the more traditional configuration featuring the actuator positioned at the center of the wing and the conventional opening of the upper flap.

“We used Free Practice 1 to carry out a kind of reliability test with the rear wing and we decided not to use it today. It helped us complete more mileage with the wing in preparation for next week, and then we will take a final decision,” the Ferrari team principal explained to Sky Sport F1.

Bringing such an influential component to China only to test it in a single practice session—especially during a Sprint weekend—could easily have suggested that Ferrari intended to use it later in qualifying and the race. However, it must be considered that Formula 1 will most likely not race in Bahrain, and certainly not in Jeddah.

This means that Ferrari, over the next month and a half, will not have other on-track sessions available apart from the three practice sessions of the Japanese Grand Prix to continue its evaluations and decide whether and when to introduce the “Macarena” wing for a full race weekend.

At the end of Sprint Qualifying in Shanghai, Lewis Hamilton highlighted Ferrari’s effort in bringing the wing to China earlier than originally planned, since the initial timeline suggested it would only be ready after around five races.

“I’m not exactly sure why we stepped back from it. I think it’s because we rushed things to have it here, while it wasn’t supposed to be ready until the fourth or fifth race, or something like that. So they did a really great job to have it here in time.”

The team brought two examples of the rotating-profile rear wing to China but ultimately judged it too early to deploy the solution during the weekend. Lewis Hamilton nevertheless underlined that the concept appears capable of delivering the extra performance Ferrari hopes to gain from the innovative design first seen during the Bahrain pre-season tests in February.

“We only had two examples of the wing. And maybe for me it was a bit too early to use it here. So we took it off. The car was still fantastic. And we will work to try to bring it back once it’s ready.”