The FIA have unsurprisingly ruled that the innovative and yet controversial McLaren rear wing design is legal, and have granted the team permission to race with the MP4-25 car this weekend without making changes to the setup.
The rear wing issue has been one of the dullest and least contentious of all of F1's recent "-gate" fiascos, with Wing-gate all being solved rather easily.
The issue arose when the Red Bull and Ferrari teams allegedly asked the FIA to clarify that the unique design of the McLaren wing was legal.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner confirmed that they had made the request and named Ferrari as well, but the Italian team denied that it had protested the design.
The contention over the wing stems from the fact that the design has the property to 'stall' at high speeds, giving the car a distinct advantage down straights on a racetrack.
But although McLaren admitted that they had brought an alternative wing design to Bahrain as a "contingency" plan, there never seemed to be any serious doubt about the legality of the device, and the FIA ruled the design legal in Bahrain on Thursday following an inspection.
Reports suggest that the wing design could give the car a 6kph advantage down long straights over its rivals.
An FIA offical in Bahrain was quoted by Auto Motor und Sport as saying that the wing design was a "simple but brilliant trick".
Information about the system had been sketchy before the verdict, but new information suggests that as well as the 'stalling' device on the rear of the car, that consists of small slots in the top of the rear wing and allows the car to lower drag down long straights, the MP4-25 also has a unique 'channelling' system for airflow through the car.
Air flows into the cockpit via the questionable funnel, or in McLaren-speak 'F-vent', at the front of the car in front of the cockpit, then through the car and out of the rear end. The driver can block or open the flow of air through the cockpit using their knees. This process somehow aids the 'stalling' process.
Speaking after the verdict was delivered, McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh said that he now expected most teams to copy their innovation.
"People will look at what we have got on our car and I would imagine that most teams are now looking for how they would implement such a system," he whined to Autosport.
"I think there was a 'what is it?' question initially, then there was 'it can't be legal'. Now people are starting to understand it, there is 'how quickly can we implement it?' Most people are saying that it is something quite ingenious. This was a very creative and ingenious individual in our company who came up with the idea and we've developed it."
He added that other teams might find it difficult to implement their own systems due to the homologation process used by the FIA to control development this year.
Meanwhile, Christian Horner ruled out the possibility of his, or another, team taking the protest any further.
"I think that it's unlikely that we would protest it," he mused, "So we would look at developing our own version."
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