FIA reveals teams that made changes to rear wing in Shanghai | F1 China GP. During the China GP, the Federation conducted checks on the rear wings of the teams.

During the China GP, the Federation conducted checks on the rear wings of the teams, leading many of them to make modifications in response to the new technical directive issued by the FIA. This regulation, initially set to take effect during the Spanish GP, was brought forward to address the “mini-DRS” effect created by the flexibility of the rear wing. After monitoring the teams in Australia, the FIA decided to implement the technical directive for the China GP, limiting the flexibility to 0.5 mm, with a 0.25 mm tolerance only for the Shanghai weekend.

Among the affected teams was Alpine, whose Enstone team openly admitted to being forced to make changes. Haas was on the edge of the new limitations, claiming it was very close but did not need to change its rear wing.

Moreover, the main teams did not admit to making modifications, but the FIA’s F1 technical director Nikolas Tombazis revealed that several teams were not compliant: “I hope this time it will be enough,” Nikolas Tombazis said (via Motorsport-Total.com) regarding the new directive. “I think four or five teams were [non-compliant] and had to make changes [for China].”

Cameras will help with surveillance
“We continue to use cameras, simply for safety. But ‘safety’ is actually a word I want to avoid, because it’s quite a complex phenomenon that causes this effect. In practice, we mainly use the results of load tests and combine them with the camera data, so we make sure not to miss any tricks. The images from the cameras alone wouldn’t just lead us to involve the stewards,” he added.

“It’s more likely that we will start a more detailed investigation, where we might discover that a team is using non-linear features or a mechanism. Then we would have a reason to report it.” Nikolas Tombazis concluded that the FIA is quite satisfied with the work done by the teams.

“This should not be seen as arrogance: the teams are obviously still trying to get the most out of their cars, and we have to remain vigilant,” he emphasized. “Our opinion is: a car that passes the FIA tests is generally legal, unless there are hidden mechanisms or things based on non-linear properties, temperatures, or similar things. In those cases, we intervene. In principle, we would never report a team to the stewards if it has passed the tests. But specifically on this issue, and precisely for these reasons, the rules give us the right to conduct further stiffness tests,” he concluded. The debate on flexible wings continues to be a key issue that we will hear about for a long time.