Mercedes' Toto Wolff has said that he and his team aren't concerned by Red Bull's threats to protest against their rear wing, should Red Bull spot anything that gives them reason to believe that Mercedes are running a rear wing specification that could be against the rules. Red Bull are alleging that Mercedes' rear wing is showing signs of "scoring" on the inside of the vertical wing endplate, which could be an indicator of flex of the lower rear wing element. RacingNews365.com has obtained an image of the contentious area on the Mercedes. But Wolff isn't worried about the threat, saying that Mercedes have been fully transparent with the FIA about their rear wing design throughout 2021. "I think we've been controlled [tested] 14 times on this very particular wing," Wolff said in Qatar on Friday. "The FIA has all [the] drawings about it, there is no such thing as [to what] Red Bull expects there to be, so we're happy to send it, cut it, anything you want."
What happened to the rear wing in Brazil?
With Lewis Hamilton disqualified from qualifying last weekend in Brazil, due to a DRS [Drag Reduction System] transgression, Wolff said the FIA had finally released the rear wing assembly back to Mercedes after a few days of being impounded. "We got the rear wing back and, as we thought, it was broken - it broke in qualifying," Wolff explained. "We didn't pass the 85-millimetre slot gap test on the far right side. We passed it on the left and the middle, but not on the right by a fraction of a millimetre, and that's fine. We weren't allowed to inspect it. "Now, to make the argument that the part is broken and, consequently, we found out that two screws became undone in qualifying, and that caused that right side to be irregular. Probably, it was even detrimental to the lap time, but it is what it is. It was reported to the stewards. "That is very different to how these things were handled in the past, where you would be able to catch up [on] things that got broken during parc ferme. "But now, we've moved on. We obviously were able to turn it around. I wish that Lewis could have taken more points from the Sprint Qualifying, but that is the past. "I think now the rules are reset and we're going to do the best out of it for the current Grand Prix and the next ones to come."
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