Mercedes 'abandon F1 design' perfected by Ferrari

Sad news for fans of F1 cars doing cool little things: Mercedes will not be developing a 'Macarena' wing for their 2026 car.

The innovative design was introduced by a couple of teams this year, with part of the rear wing essentially flipping back in certain high speed areas to reduce drag and improve top speed.

Ferrari, however, appear to be the only team to have really got the feature working so far – no surprise, given that it appeared to be their idea before anyone else's – with Red Bull removing theirs after some high-speed incidents involving Max Verstappen, and McLaren only tentatively using their own in a limited number of practice sessions.

Mercedes haven't debuted a funky-fresh flippy wing on their championship-leading W17 car, and Italian publication AutoRacer report that the Silver Arrows have decided not to pursue the concept at all.

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Why are Mercedes not developing a Macarena wing?

Why not develop an aero helper? The Italian outlet claims it's simply a budgetary consideration.

That makes some sense. While teams try to leave themselves room to manoeuvre within the cost cap as the season goes on, the ceiling on spending is very real, with some potentially damaging punishments for breaching it.

If the Macarena wing was a simple piece of equipment which could be bolted on, Mercedes would surely be well down the road to creating their own – but with McLaren and Red Bull proving how difficult the item can be to create and implement effective, and the design requiring a fairly sizeable rear wing redesign, the juice may not be worth the squeeze for the Silver Arrows.

In what has been described multiple times as a season which will be defined by the development battle off-track, every little helps. Advantage Ferrari?

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