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Ferrari revealed their most bonkers pre-season innovation yet on Thursday as Lewis Hamilton took to the track in Bahrain with a rotating rear wing on his car. It comes a day after the Italian team also turned heads up and down the pit lane with another new invention at the back of the SF-26 which is designed to give the car more downforce.

The flap beyond the exhaust that they were running with on Wednesday was eye-catching enough, prompting McLaren chief Andrea Stella to study it intently for some time. But they came out with an even more wild idea on Thursday, as the rear wing of the car was seen fully rotating as Hamilton circled the Bahrain International Circuit.

The previous Drag Reduction System (DRS) has been replaced for the new season by active aerodynamics, which puts the car into different states depending on whether it is cornering or barrelling down a straight. There are movable parts on the front and rear wings of all the cars as a result, which open up at high speeds to reduce downforce and bounce back under braking to add it back on again.

But Ferrari are trialling an even more dramatic solution at the back of the car. The rear wing on Hamilton's machine was opening on the straight, but went further by rotating all the way around so that the whole wing turns upside down, in an effort to minimise drag.

F1 TV technical expert Sam Collins spotted the innovations swiftly after Thursday's running began and said on the live Sky Sports feed: "Looking at Lewis Hamilton coming down the main straight, pay attention to the rear-wing on the Ferrari SF-26. We are talking about the upper element of the rear wing and you can see it very clearly just sitting on top.

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"Watch it go back into corner mode and this is pretty dramatic. The wing has fully rotated around. I thought at first that was a technical failure, [but] it wasn't. Ferrari have discovered something quite clever in the regulations, I feel. It doesn't specify that the wing has to be mounted the right way up when active aero is deployed.

"That means they can run the wing upside down as the car goes down the straight. An upside down aircraft-wing confirmation should reduce aerodynamic drag, because it's even generating a bit of lift. Then they've come up with a mechanism to allow it to rotate all the way around. That is something nobody else in F1 has tried yet. I think Ferrari just tried it very briefly right at the very start of the day and hoped nobody else would notice."

Whether it adds any meaningful performance remains to be seen, but pit lane reporter Ruth Buscombe investigated by asking some of Ferrari's rivals about the innovation and reported back: "The general conclusion is more than one team - now they could just be saying this - have said they've looked at that [Ferrari rear wing] solution but discounted it because what you gain on braking, you lose a bit on acceleration."