FIA's latest clampdown won't clip F1's flexi-wing saga

If there's one thing more certain in F1 than there being a technical tit-for-tat in a close title fight as we had in 2024, it will be the involvement somewhere along the way of flexi-wings.

In 2024, it was McLaren and Mercedes who found themselves under the spotlight of their rivals and the FIA, with McLaren's low-drag rear-wing design raising more than a few questions, especially after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, won by Oscar Piastri.

The claim against the design was that at high-speed under load, it flexed to an extent that it effectively created a 'mini-DRS', which in part allowed Piastri to continually stay ahead of the chasing DRS-armed Charles Leclerc.

The FIA had already been monitoring the latest iteration of the flexi-wing debate since the Belgian GP, with cameras monitoring points on the wings of teams as investigations took place.

It is an absolute law of a downforce-producing wing that it will flex under load, so, therefore, by definition, every team has flexi-wings, but to take inspiration from the famous line from George Orwell's allegorical 1945 classic Animal Farm: 'All flexi-wings are equal, but some are more equal than others.'

Needless to say, McLaren was only set to run the offending wing again during the Las Vegas GP, and offered to modify the part in such a way as to prevent any protests from rival teams. 

But the FIA has since announced it is "committed to ensure that bodywork flexibility is no longer a point of contention for the 2025 season."

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Flexi-wings are back in fashion

To do this, the governing body is stepping up the scope of rear-wing tests from the start of the new season, with further front-wing tests coming in from June's Spanish GP.

The idea of a "phased" approach is to allow the teams to "adapt without the need to discard existing components unnecessarily."

Decoded, that means the FIA is waiting until round nine of the season to make the front-wing tests harder so teams don't waste the new parts they've spent all winter designing. 

But despite the governing body's best efforts, flexi-wings will always play a role in F1.

Back in 2010, after yet another flare-up of flexi-wings after the Hungarian GP where Mark Webber won, Christian Horner had his say. 

"It complies with the regulations and our technical guys should only take it as a compliment because, at the end of the day, the car fully complies," he observed after another FIA clampdown. 

"And it is down to what you do on the track and not what you say in the press."

Fast-forward to another close title fight in 2021, Red Bull was pinged for a flexing rear-wing was highlighted on Verstappen's car in the Spanish GP. 

This flexi-wing clampdown will last as long as it takes for F1 teams to become distracted by another technical gizmo that a rival has deployed which they can't figure out quite how to do. 

Attention will then turn to whatever that happens to be, and as sure as night follows day and the Moon orbits the Earth, sometime in the future, we'll be back talking about flexi-wings.