McLaren MP4-30 short nose for Austria fails crash tests

The centrepiece of McLaren’s aerodynamic upgrade for the Austrian Grand Prix next weekend is yet to receive the green light after failing the mandatory FIA crash test.

Montreal was a notably bleak weekend for the Honda-powered team, but the bright side was that a raft of improvements are in the pipeline for Austria.

“There is a new engine package, a lot of things coming for Austria,” confirmed Jenson Button. “It will be very different apart from the colour scheme.”

Indeed, teams have been increasingly turning towards the so-called ‘short nose’ aerodynamic concept in 2015.

But Red Bull, for one, faced a long delay in getting its version over the hurdle of the FIA’s mandatory crash tests.

And international reports this week claim the ‘short nose’ concept for McLaren’s MP4-30 has now failed the front-end tests up to five separate times.

The latest failure was reportedly at the UK’s Cranfield facility last week.

A McLaren spokesman told us: “Some significant aero updates require crash testing. They rarely pass their crash tests first time around. We are confident that our new nose box will pass its crash test in the near future.”