Piastri sits third in the drivers’ championship after the opening three rounds with teammate Lando Norris heading the standings.

McLaren is also comfortably positioned at the top of the constructors’ championship, with two of three wins and five podiums results thus far.

At least part of McLaren’s recent success has been attributed to the boundary-pushing MCL39.

The Woking squad has been one of the teams thought to be at the limit of what the FIA deems acceptable when it comes to flexible wings.

That’s despite the papaya operation passing more stringent deflection tests introduced for the Chinese Grand Prix.

The noose is set to tighten further once the circus reaches Spain in early June when a new technical directive with even tougher deflection tests will come into force.

“I’m pretty confident we’ll be strong all year,” Piastri said of the impact of the looming changes.

“I don’t think it’ll change too much.

“I’ve not spoken to the team about it massively in all honestly, which probably tells you enough about that.

“Let’s see when we get to Spain, but we’ve still got a lot of races until then.

“I think we’ll be a strong team all year.”

Piastri’s comments come after footage from the Japanese Grand Prix showed the McLaren rear wing appearing to sag under load.

Onboard vision shows the top flap of the wing appearing to move as Norris and Piastri navigated a lap of Suzuka, in stark contrast to the rigid solution on the Red Bull.

Footage highlighting the different approaches was uploaded to X with Jos Verstappen, Max’s father, retweeting the post.

However, Speedcafe understands there are no concerns from the papaya operation and no ongoing dialogue relating to the issue.

Flexible wings have become a battleground in recent years, with rivals looking to mitigate a perceived car advantage.

McLaren and Mercedes were identified as two teams close to the regulations’ limit last year, with the former asked to make changes to its rear wing following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix—a race won by Piastri.

Yeah the season definitely starts in Spain, McLaren is a monster when it comes to wing flex pic.twitter.com/E9JT4V0XVI

— Cytrus 🍋 (@cytrusf1) April 9, 2025

While McLaren currently holds a competitive advantage, its margin over its rivals is narrow.

“We have the quickest car at the moment, but our advantage is not enough to be careless and laid back and not execute,” Piastri said.

“We saw Melbourne was a very strong weekend for us, but we also got the most out of the car.

“China and Japan have both showed that it doesn’t take much to go wrong for us to not be at the front.

“We have an advantage in the race, for sure; I think qualifying you have to still be on it because the gap is not much.

“And as we saw in Japan, Max put in a good performance, and it was enough to be better than us.

“That’s just another demonstration that it’s going to be tight the whole year.”

Those fine margins are at the core of the current flexi-wing mudslinging as teams attempt to create doubt, apply pressure, and distract before any advantage can be truly driven home.

Not that McLaren has a perfect car, far from it.

Piastri and Norris have both admitted it’s difficult to drive on the limit, a point that was evident as far back as pre-season testing.

“It’s not a completely different car to what we had last season,” Piastri said ahead of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

“There’s a lot of ideas and philosophies that are the same.

“Yes, it’s been tricky to get all the lap time out of it in every situation, and I think we’ve seen that.

“But still, if I had to pick out of all 10 cars on the grid right now, I’d still pretty happily be choosing ours.”

2025 F1 Bahrain Grand Prix – Start time, how to watch, TV times & more