Why F1's flexi-wing clampdown could shake up the 2025 season status quo

New York Times

6 days ago

BARCELONA — The Spanish Grand Prix has historically been one of the most important races of a Formula One season.
The mix of corner speeds at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya makes the track ideal to gauge a car's ultimate aerodynamic performance. When this race typically opened the European leg of the season, it was also where most teams debuted major car upgrade packages.
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F1's governing body, the FIA, will enforce a new technical directive starting this weekend, further clamping down on the flexibility of front wings through more stringent tests. This makes Spain an important yardstick in the 2025 season — with performance margins so fine between the leading teams, it could be a significant point in the fight for this year's world championship. After all, the gains made in aeroelasticity technology within the current rules have boosted McLaren to its current dominant position.
Christian Horner, Red Bull's team principal, said last Sunday in Monaco that the new technical directive was 'essentially a regulation change.' As McLaren and Red Bull have vied for supremacy at the front of the F1 pack for almost a year now, the debate about flexi-wings has been intense, relating to both wings on the front and the rear of the car.
'We've been talking around it for a long time,' Sauber team principal Jonathan Wheatley, who was sporting director at Red Bull until the end of last year, told reporters in Monaco. 'Some teams have been gaining a really big advantage from it.'
Teams always push the regulated boundaries to improve the performance of their cars. In this case, wing flexibility is a crucial way to create more aerodynamic load. The flexi-wings bend slightly at high speeds to reduce drag or increase downforce, helping the car go faster. This typically makes cars faster either down straights (with rear wing flexing) or in corners (front wing flexing).
While the FIA quickly stamped out any new tricks with the rear wings ahead of 2025's round two in China, teams were given until Spain to prepare for more stringent front wing deflection tests. The technical directive — essentially a rule update that can be enforced by the FIA even mid-season — reduces permitted front wing flexibility from 15mm to 10mm.
'Barcelona is on the calendar of everybody in the paddock, with the new regulation for the front wing,' Ferrari F1 chief Fred Vasseur said. 'We have been working on it for ages now. This can be a game-changer for everybody, because we don't know the impact on every single team.'
The front wing is one of the most essential aerodynamic elements on an F1 car, given that it effectively sets up the airflow passing over the rest of the chassis and helps determine how fast cars can move around circuits. Even the most minor changes to the regulations in that area can have a significant influence. And this is no small change.
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'It's a significant change, so of course there will be some effect,' said Horner. 'The teams have anticipated that, so it may well be neutral (in terms of how it impacts a car's pace potential). Or maybe it will have some effect on (tire) degradation. It doesn't make life easier.'
Red Bull, in particular, hopes the rule change will hurt McLaren, which has stolen an early march in the pecking order this season, thanks to its pace advantage through the early rounds.
Max Verstappen's efforts with a Red Bull car he's not totally in sync with have nevertheless helped keep him in the title hunt. He currently sits only 25 points back from McLaren's championship leader, Oscar Piastri. As Red Bull works to improve its car and give Verstappen confidence to push even harder with the RB21, a regulation change that hinders McLaren's performance would naturally be welcome.
'We're still within a race win with 16 races still to go,' Horner said, referencing the points total accrued for a grand prix victory being precisely 25. 'There's a long way to go in this championship.'
As Horner noted, the anticipation period for these changes stretches back to January. The long wait to round nine of the season could mean everyone adjusts their front wings within the new requirements in the same way.
At McLaren, the feeling has always been one of confidence – that it would be able to roll with the change. It insists its pace advantage is not solely down to its current front wing design, with focus instead being placed on its tire management and brake cooling solutions.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella claimed at Imola two weeks ago it was 'good news' when the other teams turned attention to what it was doing, instead of looking inwards. He referred to 'some of the aspects that allegedly are present in our car, (but) that effectively are not present.'
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Stella added: 'And certainly, even if they were – let's say, flexi-wings, like a front wing deflection, like everyone else – it has nothing to do with the reason why McLaren is very competitive.
'So, I hope that in the future there will be more of these kinds of sagas, because it means that our rivals keep focusing on the wrong things, and this is, for us, just good news. It's just helping our quest.'
One thing noted by Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff in Monaco is that there have been differences in how teams have been pushing the limits for front wing flexibility. Wolff said Ferrari, for instance, had been 'probably the most conservative on flexi-wings.' But he was also unsure whether the new rule would make a massive change to the pecking order. 'I'm not sure it will,' Wolff said. 'But (it's) another angle of curiosity. I don't know how it's going to go.'
But the outcome of the Barcelona weekend could also help determine how teams plan their car design development for the remainder of 2025. With a major overhaul of the car design regulations on the horizon for next year, all teams are currently weighing the trade-off between keeping some resources focused on making gains for this year versus going all-in for a better car in 2026.
Ferrari's Charles Leclerc said in Monaco that Barcelona would be 'another very important point of the season' because of the front wing rule change. 'We'll see whether it benefits us or not,' he said. 'Then we'll have to make the decision – Fred (Vasseur) will have to make the decision – whether it's the right time to move on and prepare next season. That is going to be super important for everyone to be starting on the right foot.'
Even a team such as Sauber, which is currently last in the constructors' championship, is taking a keen interest in how the clampdown might impact the competitive order. 'I'm a very optimistic person, and I hope other teams are going to suffer more than we are,' said Wheatley. 'I'm hoping that it'll bring everything our way.'
The only certainty is that the stricter tests will have some kind of impact on every single team up and down the grid, whether they admit to it in public or not. What that then means for their performance is less clear, but at a time when F1's competitive margins are finer than ever, every thousandth is precious.
The other certainty going into the rest of the weekend? This track will leave teams with nowhere to hide if they have been hurt.
'It's an aero circuit, Barcelona,' said Wheatley. 'So, we'll know pretty soon (if the rule change has had an impact) after qualifying.'
(Top image: Sipa USA)