FIA deliver crucial F1 flexi wing update

FIA head of single seaters Nikolas Tombazis has revealed that no changes will be made to the front wing flex tests for the 2025 F1 season.

Front wing flexing became a controversial topic this year, with Ferrari and Red Bull having raised concerns over the front wings of other teams, notably McLaren and Mercedes. 

To see investigate whether some front wings were flexing beyond the legal limit, motorsport's governing body fitted cameras to the cars from the Belgian Grand Prix. 

The FIA, ultimately, had no problem with any front wing on the grid as long as it passed the necessary flex tests.

However, the governing body accepts that there is one key challenge when it comes to testing front wings.

"We are pretty happy with what we've seen," Tombazis told Autosport. "I hasten to say that it's not a question always of being happy or not. "It's also a question of whether you feel that a meaningful test can be made.

"One of the challenges in the front wing is that, compared to other parts of the car, the front wing loading is much more varied between cars in a given location and so on.

"So most tests relate to the load of a certain direction, certain position of application, certain magnitude must not produce a [certain] deformation.

"The most successful such tests imitate as much as possible what happens in real life with loads and, on the earlier wing for example, it's reasonably successful. On the front wing, the variety between cars would make that quite difficult."

With the FIA finding no problems, the front wing flex tests will not be changed for the new season, despite reports some teams are developing flexing front wings. 

"Obviously, there was a lot of hoo-hah about it during the summer and early autumn," Tombazis added.

"We had made it quite clear to teams since 2022 at least, that we were not planning to introduce any further tests on the front wing and we stuck to that."