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Racing Bulls are testing their own variant of the rotating rear wing design at Imola during a filmday on Tuesday, according to Italian outlet F1inGenerale. The Red Bull sister team could introduce the so-called macarena wing as early as the Italian Grand Prix at Monza if initial feedback proves positive. Ferrari pioneered the concept during winter testing, and both Red Bull and McLaren have since developed their own iterations.
The filmday format restricts running to demonstration tyres and a 200-kilometre limit, but provides the team with controlled track time to validate computational simulations. Arvid Lindblad drove the car during the morning session, with Liam Lawson took over in the afternoon. Lawson raced for Racing Bulls at Zandvoort last weekend and completed a tyre test for the team at Mugello on Monday. No images of the new rear wing have yet emerged.
Ferrari's rotating element spawns a development race
The macarena wing label stems from Ferrari's Bahrain pre-season test, where the Scuderia debuted a rear wing in which the entire top flap rotates during Straight Mode activation. Formula 1's 2025 technical regulations reintroduced active aerodynamics after nearly three decades, permitting moveable elements on both front and rear wings. The ruleset offers significant design freedom, and teams have responded with wildly divergent interpretations of the Straight Mode architecture.
Red Bull brought their own rotating-flap design to the grid earlier this season, followed by McLaren. Racing Bulls' development timeline suggests the concept has proven aerodynamically viable across multiple wind tunnel philosophies. Monza represents the ideal proving ground: the circuit's long straights and low-downforce character make rear wing efficiency critical to lap time and overtaking potential.
Tsolov logs TPC mileage in older chassis
Separately, Racing Bulls are running a Testing of Previous Cars session at Imola with Nikola Tsolov behind the wheel of an older-spec machine. The Bulgarian leads the Formula 2 championship and has been linked to a 2027 race seat at the team, though no formal announcement has been made. The TPC outing offers Tsolov his first extended experience with Formula 1 machinery outside of a structured rookie session.
If Racing Bulls deploy the macarena wing at Monza, they will join a growing subset of the grid exploiting the regulation's rotational-flap loophole. Whether the design delivers a measurable performance gain on race day remains the open question, but the investment suggests the team believe they can extract qualifying and race pace from the architecture. Imola's data will determine whether that belief translates into hardware.
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I. Hadjar
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