I came across onboard footage of seb's pole lap in china. I noticed that the front wing moves.
On the straights it moves down where as in corners it moves up and the movement is relative to the speed of the car.
The movement is more pronounced in the 3rd sector where a long straight follows a hard braking point. Focus on the right part of the wing throughout the lap.
Since moveable aero dynamic components are banned and I am not claiming anything either way at this point. Would like to know what do you think about the FW if it is legal and does it give RBR the gain on the other teams.

link to onboard footage.
Sebestian Vettels Pole Lap China 2010

Discuss...

Its clearly illegal & needs to be banned. I know some people will say its due to camber changes & tyre loading etc. Its clearly not. The wing clearly moves vertically along the Z-axis during cornering. No wonder why Red Bull have been fast in the tight twisty middle sector.

dosnt seem to flex any more than the others.

did you compare with other car onboards?

Yes I did compare with other car onboards and I could not pick up any movement except for when the car bumped off the kerbs

Needs to be banned asap.

The wing flexes down the straight because the aerodynamic load on the wing increases astronomically as the car goes faster. Its inevitable, & they all do it to some degree. That's why the FIA has a spec on the allowable amount of wing flex. Maybe Adrian's wings flex more because everybody knows his cars are more flimsy?

go checkout some overtake moves of hamilton in australia as well in malaysia and see his front wing vibrate/move.

BTW when the teams used to use the bridged front-wings, i remember that they used to flex a lot. I don't think there's any need for even an investigation into the redbull. of course the FIA has done all the checks etc that they do and clearly the car is legal.

can we concentrate on racing ?

Wings are inherently flexible.
No issue as long as the flexibility does not go beyond the official FIA flex tests, which it likely does not.

The front wing it's moving indeed, but please provide a link with a Ferrari and/or McLaren to see if it's happen the same thing to them....

Rules with regard to this matter








I agree its hard to quantify anything from the footage but it does seem more than 10 mm.

Felipe Massa onboard Malaysia

It would be nice to find onboard footage from the nose cam. I haven't been able to find one till now.

Looks like a combination of minor flexing, exaggerated buy the angle of the front arm position under and off load.

A fixed shot with nothing else moving (arms) would give more of an idea how much flex there is.

I agree its not the best shot available. I stuck up a transparent plastic ruler on my PC screen to join the top ends of the FW end plates to establish a reference line.
It could still see movement of the wing however a nose cam shot would be ideal to compare.

Breaking for the corner at 1.16+ provides a good comparison of the range of flex, and it does seem to be more than 10mm

Depends somewhat if the actual load on track is equivalent to or over 500N at 800mm blah de blah and the suspension will also naturally be rising as downforce falls away

But certainly interesting

Yes it does however the force load on the straights might also far exceed the 500N used in the test, hence the bigger movement.

Amazing how we are able to spot from some grainy internet footage what the FIA are totally unable to detect in any of their inspections.

If the front wing was illegal, they'd have banned it already.

In Melbourne Hamilton's wing started moving noticeably after it was slightly damaged in contact with Massa. In Malaysia I didn't notice anything unusual.

In the onboard camera from Vet you need to be careful as well in isolating the movement of the suspension (roll in corners for example) from the movement of the wing. When in some corners the wing seems to be going up is the suspension that instead moves up changing the reference.

All true - but as we learnt from the '07 Ferrari flexi floor, if a part is designed to meet the tests but be flexible beyond those tests for performance reasons, there's a chance the FIA will change the tests.

I don't know whether or not the RB front wing is like that or not, and I expect that given it's such a visable part and we are 4 races in that it's not, but worth mentioning.

At first glance Id be amazed if the other wings didnt move in a similar way. Its not like a particular elelment is moving to give a drag reduction, the whole structure appears to deflect. IMO that is less likely to be an advantage as a lower wing structure (ie bowing downwards around a mid point) is unlikely to reduce drag. Compare this to Ferraris deflecting front wing elements from a couple of years ago for something that needed banning.

Have to say i couldnt see it flexing. Very hard to tell since the suspension arms will be moving too.

Looks fine to me. It only seems to move in the direction of the loaded suspension.

Do you know how much 500N is?
And do you think this is the maximum load a front wing gets at high speed?
Why all of you think you are smarter than FIA scrutineers and can make valid measures by means of TV footage with a distorting lens?

500 N ~= 50 kg on an area of 20 x 10 cm = 200 sq. sm is (2.5 N) ~= 0.255 kg per sq. cm

I cannot see how you can make any assumptions based on that footage. There are too many other components moving to be able to say the wing is flexing excessively. As the wing obviously meets the test criteria as laid down in the rule book, then it is clearly legal. Personally I think that it would still be legal if the FIA increased the test load.

Easy fella! Take a chill pill or something

People are making some observations thats all. It does seem to be flexing

No one that I can see has been proclaiming FACT

Get back into bed and get out the other side, go and have a nice cup of tea, and enjoy the day

I did not claim anything either way. I noticed something and found it interesting so I mentioned it.
All I can think is that this seems quite alot but I agree with you I have no means to measure the load and/or figure out exactly how much is the flex.
To me it seems quite a lot but I am no expert and I may be entirely wrong.

(On a side note, I couldn't believe the amount by which the Renault fin was oscillating horizontally, the car was almost 'swimming' through the air)

But all of you who think that a wing should not flex at all and flexing automatically makes a car illegal, are just plain wrong.
Consequently this thread is also wrong.

Unless of course you try to find something to just gossip about and wear out your keyboards in the following three weeks.

I have to edit now my previous post. The RBR is not only thanks to illegal heigh-control but also to illegal front wings so fast and that on top of weaker engine and no F-Duct. Please inform the FIA of your discovery so that can finally get their job done. It is just incredible how they keep missing all the illegal RBR systems.

H2H

I do not deny that there is a certain degree of flex in the wing and didn't suggest at any point that the wing should not flex at all.
What i observed however is that the flex seems quite alot in this case.

Bwahaha That's about right

It's going to be a loonnnnggg 3 weeks

the front wings DOES move, they drivers have a button on the wheel to change the angle to lower the wing 3 degrees to allow better overtaking, its been that way all last year as well, sometime you can see the wing dip down from the low level onboard camera.

this is different to any wing flexing, which can also take place and can be illegal if designed in to reduce drag. A lot of rear wings have had to be designed or stiffened to prevent excess flexing.

Well RBR is quick and all credit to them but being fans of F1, the technical aspects are fascinating and most interesting aspect and i dont think we can cause any harm (neither is my intention) to RBR by discussing these things.

Judging by eye is so much distant from a technical aspect.

I have already acknowledged the fact that this is not the best way to look into these things but what other choice have we got? but thats not the point really.
If you think its legal I respect your opinion but I have yet to make my opinion either way.

Err... its not wing flex, its more like the whole car is being lowered by the aerodynamic compression, the tyres remain stationary relative to the rest of the car. You're talking about tons of weight in high speed cornering hence there has to be some give. Realise that an F1 car works because of the whole, so look at the rest of the car as well as the angle of the suspension arms. Its just that its so much more noticeable these days with the ridiculously intricate tall and complicated dual stage front wings, and the fact that the cars are so long now.

Can we please discuss the thread topic. If you feel the topic is not worthy of discussion then don't post. It contributes nothing to just attack posters or attacking or criticising the thread.

It doesn't look to me that the Ferrari front wing is moving....

Wooow I think you're right. Now that's why they were so fast in S3 in China. OMG

I could see it rise up relative to the nose camera housings when in to a braking zone at one point, but I wouldn't know if it was abnormal. Looks fine to me.

Massa's wing does it too.

Watching again I think you're right. The whole car seems to be lowered...

There seems to be a slight deflection on the ends if you look relative to the nose, but it's very minor, and happens on Massa's car too.

3 weeks... lol

The Ferrari flexi floor met the test criteria as laid down in the rule book, but was described by Whiting as clearly illegal.

I'm not saying that this is the case with the RBR wing (we would need to know a looooot more than we can guess from footage - and I doubt it is the case) but am just saying it isn't quite as simple as "meet the test = legal".

If the wing passes the flex test in scrutineering then it is legal. Sorry, the wing is legal. You will need to look for another straw to cling to.

From memory I don't think the floor itself was actually declared illegal, what the FIA changed was the test loads and method of testing meaning the flexi-floor system could no longer be used. Same thing would happen here. If there is any suspicion that wings are flexing too much they will simply up the test load.

Iirc, Whiting's letter to McLaren (when they posed their version of the flexi floor) stated it would be 'clearly illegal' despite passing the (then) tests.

I see similar movement in the onboards of other drivers. Not to that extend tho. What i'm not sure is if actualy the wing bends. What we see could aswell be Red Bull's "Ride Height System" in action. My theory was that if they have something then it's done in a way that the car gets lifted under heavy load by a clever spring/damper system that would be perfectly legal. And of course heavy load not only comes from a high fuel load but also from high downforce in some parts of a track.

And if i'm wrong with that then we should still consider that Red Bull has a unique suspension setup which could result in the car making different movements then its competitors on a identical track.

That's a statement to the team and not something that is written in the rulebook or ever actually put to the test. Also we don't know what Macs interpretation was compared to Ferrari's. I still think the floor itself was not declared illegal, just the test methods changed to negate them. That's really the correct thing to do as the FIA would likely find it impossible to write the rules to cover every possible method of mounting the floor.

This could be another explanation for this movement. Instead of the wing moving down on the straights, it could be the car moving up and wing appears to move down relative to the car. :/ but then the question is that what benefit would it bring by moving the car up on the straights?
however another point is that FIA have ruled out any presence of "Ride height system" on RBR

It would be a completely passive mechanical system that is normal part of the suspensions spring and damper system. I always thought "ride height system" would be a wrong and misleading name for a solution like that. So the FIA could just not consider it such a system. In that case they wouldn't go around and tell all other teams how Red Bull does it.

The benefit of lifting the car near the end of the straights and fast corners would be that the car can run lower on slow parts of the track then the cars of the competition.

Looks to move more than the stipulated limit, but then again the limit seems quite small considering the forces at play.