A missed shot. McLaren proved to be a step ahead of everyone, starting the Barcelona weekend without declaring any modifications in the list that the FIA releases before free practice. It was a slap in the face for those like Fred Vasseur who believed the Spanish GP would mark the start of a new championship.
Rob Marshall and his team did an excellent job by already bringing the new front wing to Imola, and at the Enzo and Dino Ferrari circuit, the Woking technicians, working in advance, gathered useful data to approve a solution that was slightly stiffened but unchanged in shape to meet the new constraints. Despite stricter checks that were supposed to limit the advantage of the papaya cars, the wing passed without issue.
Despite commendable efforts by Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s single-seater technical head, the federation still can’t keep up with the development capabilities of a top team’s aerodynamics department. At the beginning of the season, it was already evident with the rear wings that nothing had changed regarding material deflection, despite the FIA having tightened controls.
By the ninth race, the same scenario repeated itself at the front: another lost cause. Some may point out that Oscar Piastri’s pole time didn’t break the Montmeló lap record (1’11”383) set last year by Lando Norris in Q3: were those 163 thousandths lost because of a less flexible wing or the unbearable Spanish heat? Qualifying began with 47°C track temperature—Saharan conditions for Catalunya.
The FIA reserves the right to intervene again during the season if needed, but after what was seen in Barcelona, will teams be willing to spend more money to adapt their profiles to potential new changes, especially if those expenses risk reducing the budget available for the development of the 2026 cars?
Certainly not. Some supported this update in hopes of seeing real change, but facts have dashed those expectations, and it would make no sense to intervene again for a regulation that is already nearing the end of its cycle.
It will be interesting to see which verification criteria the FIA will want to introduce next year with the agile cars that will have active aerodynamics both front and rear. Some have called for the end of static checks, proposing instead dynamic image analysis, since the FIA’s technical stewards could already observe in real time the programmed movements by monitoring how the reference points mounted on wings, flaps, and supports shift with changing load.
The technology for such checks is ready: HD cameras can provide clear and precise images, but the challenge is to ensure reliable measurements that cannot easily be contested on appeal if they aren’t repeatable, since—as Nikolas Tombazis candidly admitted to Sky Italia—“…these new measurement techniques are still under discussion.”
The FIA staff uses video recordings to spot excesses and propose interventions, but they still don’t seem capable of providing millimetric checks on cars flying over 300 km/h on tracks that are far from being billiard tables.
The challenge, therefore, is far more complex than it seems. And the governing body always finds itself at a disadvantage, both in terms of tools and human resources: twenty stewards against more than two hundred aerodynamicists who think of nothing else, seven days a week…
Leave a Reply