The second part of the 2021 Formula One season was marked by several accusations from Red Bull who argued that its title rival Mercedes was using flexi-wings in order to improve its pace by increasing the straightline speed. The potential issue was that the German team had identified an ingenious solution for its main plane to flex down at high speed to reduce drag and therefore improve speed.
Red Bull insisted on the matter while the two teams were fighting for the Formula 1 titles and even went as far as to imply that marks visible on the Mercedes endplate were proof that the wing was moving, despite the fact that its main rival was always adamant the marks were a red-herring.
As a result of Red Bull’s allegations at that moment, the FIA launched a fact-finding mission from the Qatar Grand Prix to better investigate the behaviour and characteristics of the rear wings of all the teams. While the new tests showed no regulatory value, so were not to check on the legality of cars, it was hoped that they would give some indications about what was needed for the following seasons.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection from Puma!
When asked about what the FIA identified in those examinations, Formula 1’s head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis pointed out that nothing unusual was uncovered. Yet he added that the FIA would continue to look at solutions to improve the way in which wings can be tested going forward to help ensure teams were not finding clever ways to make wings flex.
“In Qatar, there was no monkey business identified, or anything like that. We didn’t find something that was concerning. It was not a bad test, but it can be improved. So we’re thinking how to maybe make some improvements to it for next year [2022], potentially.” – explained Nikolas Tombazis, who was Ferrari chief designer from 2006 to 2014.
The current FIA technical chief added one of the problems that have to be solved is the way in which the forces are applied to the main plane to help expose any clever aero elasticity features that teams could be using:
“The reason the test is not so good is technically the trailing edge of the main plane is going quite upwards. If you load it in the downward direction, it’s quite stiff, so we want to manage to load it in a direction that is normal. But then it’s a bit more difficult because we can’t use gravity. So we need to fine tune it, and it needs a bit more give to be prepared for it. It’s not impossible, of course.” – the former Ferrari chief aerodynamicist concluded.
Leave a Reply