Bending Wings

Are you following the saga of the deflecting wings? It would be quite fascinating if it wasn't so pathetic. In short, the problem appears to be that one (Ferrari) or more (Mclaren?) teams are using wings that do not conform to the regulations.

The rules are fairly clear, wings must not deform, well, not by much. Any engineer will tell you that if you hang a weight on a wing supported only at the other end, it will deflect downwards. But we're not talking about weight, we're talking about air pressure at high speed. The theory is that a wing will generate lots of downforce to help the car go round corners, but this in turn generates drag and slows the car on the straights. Ideally you'd have a system of flaps like you do on planes, you've all seen them change the section of the wing at low speeds to increase upforce (Is that a word? It must be if downforce is) for take off or landing. On a car you'd raise the flaps for the corners and put them flat for the straights. You may have seen pictures of the Mercedes Le Mans car in 1955 which used airbrakes in a similar manner.

But moveable aerodynamic devices (eg flaps) are not allowed. So an option is to make a bendy wing that generates lots of downforce until so much air is hitting it that it bends out of shape, typically making it flatter and thus generating less drag. So the car suddenly goes faster. I think that's quite clever, and given the number of pointless twiddly bits on the side of an F1 car these days, doesn't seem to present much of a problem. It might make it entertaining for the driver if halfway through a fast corner (accelerating out of 130R for example) downforce suddenly decreases, but entertainment is what we're after, isn't it?

But the FIA doesn't like that idea and so have the rule about deflection. And as it's difficult to measure deflection at high speed (difficult note, not impossible) we have a situation where we're not sure whether cars are legal.

So, congratulations to the FIA for yet another set of clear, enforceable rules.