Ferrari’s experimental “Macarena” rear wing made a brief appearance on track in Shanghai before being removed ahead of Friday’s Sprint Qualifying.
Ferrari unveiled a unique rear wing during pre-season testing in Bahrain last month, with the wing dubbed the ‘Macarena’ by team principal Fred Vasseur due to the movement of the rear wing flap when activated.
Instead of the top flap flipping backwards, similar to the DRS wings of yesteryear, Ferrari’s new design rotated the upper elements through a full inversion.
PlanetF1.com tech editor Matt Somerfield explained: “The Ferrari solution appears to rotate around a central pivot point between the two upper elements but, rather than stop in a semi DRS-style position, the Ferrari wing continues to rotate, flipping completely over onto its back.”
Although the team trialled it during testing – with Hamilton completing five laps on the penultimate day – Ferrari opted to run the traditional DRS-style design at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
However, as Vasseur had hinted during testing when asked if the wing was a gimmick to throw off rivals, the Macarena was on both SF-26s throughout Friday’s first practice in Shanghai where Ferrari opted not to do back-to-back testing with the two cars.
The team, though, removed it after FP1.
PlanetF1.com understands that the team has elected to continue its development so it can be certain of its benefits ahead of a return at future events. And when the gap to Mercedes is considered, running it ahead of then proved a ‘pointless’ risk.
Hamilton says it was perhaps “premature” of Ferrari to bring it to the track as early as China, with the team initially targeting race four.
“I don’t really know why we went back,” Hamilton said.
“I think we rushed to get it here and it was not supposed to be on the car until, I think it was, race four or five.
“So they did a great job to rush it here and we only had two of them.
“It was maybe a little bit premature so we took it off. The car was still great.”
The good news is that Friday’s FP1 was not the last time Formula 1 will see the Macarena.
“We’ll work to try to bring it back when it’s ready,” he added.
Hamilton qualified fourth for the Sprint race in Shanghai where he was sixth-tenths down on pole-sitter George Russell. Charles Leclerc was sixth quickest, a further 0.4s off the pace.
Hamilton said compared to FP1, he was very happy with his SF-26 in Sprint Quali.
“Yeah really please with the session,” Hamilton said. “My team did a great job, my engineers did a fantastic job to turn the car around because FP1 was a tricky session with that spin.
“The car generally felt great, just we are losing on the straights a lot of time. Yeah we have a lot of work to do, we really have to push so hard back in Maranello to improve on power.
“That was something we were conscious of last year, we thought that Mercedes started earlier than us and the rest – which they did last time as well.
“They’ve done a fantastic job and we’ve got to step up, we’ve got to push to close that gap.
“I think the car feels great and we can compete with them through corners but when you are down on power, that’s just the way it is.”
