Removed McLaren upgrade set for Monaco GP return

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has confirmed that the Woking-based outfit will trial its new front wing at the Monaco Grand Prix, despite removing it in Canada.

The British team introduced a new front wing for the Canadian Grand Prix but quickly removed it, opting to return to the specification it used en route to a double podium in Miami.

After using the new front wing in practice, McLaren opted to remove it ahead of sprint qualifying due to it not delivering the expected performance.

Lando Norris was fitted with the new front wing at the start of practice at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with Oscar Piastri switching to it mid-session.

Piastri was more comfortable with the new front wing than the reigning world champion, although both opted to stick with the Miami specification after a positive sprint qualifying session.

According to Stella, the front wing introduced in Montreal will return at the Circuit de Monaco for further testing, particularly with three practice sessions on offer.

"We knew that this front wing had some element of deviation from an aerodynamic point of view," Stella told select media including RacingNews365. 

"So we’ve tested the wing. We want to repeat some testing and gain some further information. And also for this kind of circuit, the wing would have been better, but it wouldn't have been a game changer. So before we adopted [it] in a sprint event, we wanted to be just more reassured that we understand the full extent of the changes we’re making on the car.

"While we've been pretty much always successful in the past, not necessarily the upgrades that we have taken to a certain event, we have introduced them for that event. Sometimes they were just exploratory and just to learn the correlation with our development tools.

"So we will definitely see this wing again in Monaco."