Red Bull are bringing back the rear wing that already binned Max Verstappen twice this season. The rotating rear wing, pulled from the RB22 before Belgium after airflow reattachment failures caused shunts in Austria and at Silverstone, will reappear at the Hungaroring this weekend. Verstappen has confirmed it. The team insists it is fixed. We are about to find out.
The Wing That Kept Crashing
Red Bull introduced their own take on the rotating rear wing concept in Miami, presenting a design with a larger gap between the upper elements than Ferrari‘s original Macarena wing. Promising in a straight line, catastrophic in corners. When the upper flaps close under braking, the airflow must reattach to the wing surface in milliseconds to rebuild downforce. On at least two occasions, it did not. Max Verstappen found himself a passenger, the car sliding off track with minimal grip. He did not mince his words at the time, calling the issue “super dangerous.”
Simulated, Hopefully Solved
The encouraging news, if you choose to believe it, is that the team managed to replicate the fault in simulation. That matters. Aerodynamic instability during dynamic flap transitions is fiendishly difficult to model accurately. If they reproduced it, they had a genuine chance of fixing it.
“We assume that it has been resolved, but I obviously don’t know that. They have carried out multiple tests and run further simulations. Hopefully it closes properly now. That is the goal.” – Max Verstappen
Verstappen also noted: “Fortunately, they were also able to simulate it. It is already very good that you can reproduce the problem.” Cautiously optimistic is the most generous reading. See also Verstappen’s broader Hungarian GP setup concerns.
The Macarena Arms Race
Red Bull are not alone in pushing this technology to its limits. Ferrari have upgraded their own Macarena wing for Budapest, adding a triple-element winglet stack in the central activator area to boost downforce through the Hungaroring’s endless medium-speed corners. McLaren are also testing their own rotating rear wing in Friday practice on Oscar Piastri’s car, though the team has already flagged it will not race until later. McLaren also debut a significant new floor this weekend, making Hungary a serious development milestone for the papaya squad.
No Room for Error
With Verstappen sitting seventh in the standings, 113 points adrift of Kimi Antonelli, Red Bull cannot afford another technical failure. The Hungaroring, with its relentless sequence of tight corners, demands exactly the downforce that wing previously failed to deliver. The simulations say it works now. The track will have the final word.
If it goes wrong again, the questions aimed at Red Bull’s technical department will be considerably less polite than Verstappen’s measured press conference tone.
