Ferrari Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has lamented the in-season technical directive on front wing flexing as resulting in a "waste of money" that has done nothing to alter the competitive picture but just made the cars worse to drive.
There was much hope in at least some circles of F1 that an introduction of more stringent test limits for front wing flexing on the 2025 cars would rein in McLaren's dominance - though this prospect had been consistently dismissed by the team itself.
Reining in McLaren was anyway obviously never the stated aim of the technical directive, and while it did expect its MCL39 to be more vulnerable to challengers in Spain, this was because of the track layout rather than the technical directive.
And in qualifying even that expectation fell short - as McLaren dominated with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
Like many of his peers, Hamilton came into the weekend already expecting that the flexi-wing clampdown would have no major bearing on the pecking order.
"I drove on the simulator, and it was pretty much exactly the same," he reiterated after qualifying fifth, half a second off poleman Piastri.
"A little bit more understeer in the high-speed."
But Hamilton couldn't help but find the outcome amusing.
"The balance is definitely not as nice as what we had before... It hasn't made any… What a waste of money!
"Just wasted everyone's money. Just literally changed nothing.
"Everyone's front wings still bend, it's just half the bending. And everyone's had to make new wings and spend more money to make these [for the new guidelines].
"It just... doesn't make sense. But it is what it is, and we just continue on."
It entertained him so that even when his media session was moving on to a different topic, he chimed in again with a suggestion that money was better off being spent on charitable causes.
"In high-speed it is a little bit trickier to drive," concurred team-mate Charles Leclerc about the impact of the technical directive. "But it’s not something I dislike too much.
"It’s a bit more open and in low speed it’s a bit more stable. The high-speed is a bit more pointy. Nothing that we didn’t expect.
"Teams can achieve [that flexi-wing impact] in different ways. Mechanically everybody has something in order to achieve that in some way or another.
"I think we all went in that direction whereas before just the front wing was doing the job a bit more. On our side it didn’t change a lot."
"At the end of the day it’s not a massive, massive change," agreed Hamilton's Mercedes replacement Kimi Antonelli.
"Of course it’s a bit harder to find the right balance with the car but overall I think as you could see it didn’t really change the performance of any of the teams."
