Please go into more depth, I suspected there was more than met the eye with the 'Flexy' wings. How are you privvy to such information?

Probably the mechanisms that are incorporated onto the wing, designed to change the wing angle via driver input. So they first need to understand how to produce them to withstand the forces that are applied to them when the wing is flexing in such a dramatic fashion. If they break, they can damage the wing in the worst case scenario, or in the best, the wing stays permanently in last fixed position, which in return negate the possibility of changing the angle, and leaving the car unbalanced.

em, why should we believe you know what you are talking about?....no disrespeck

I think that for the outer edges of the wing to dip downwards you need to create a bend in the middle by moving the splitter in the center of the wing upwards. It's seems counter intuitive though.

I'm confused, they've said they don't understand it so unless they're bluffing your first sentence makes no sense to me and your second suggests that either they don't understand that part of it or tey understand it but can't replicate it?

Please elaborate, we need good news!

Think back to what was being done by Ferrari in 2007. It's the same thing all over again.

That doesn't really explain anything, actually. We get that there's 'flexing' going on under load. That much is pretty obvious. Its the details that I thinks some of us want to have better explained. I mean, you sound like you KNOW what you're talking about, so IF you really do, then why not go into more detail?

Do I understand that correctly?
The splitter under load moves/flexes upwards so the car can be set up with an increased rake - the front closer to the ground than the rear.
http://www.formula1.com/news/technical/2007/0/397.html

So when the diffuser at higher speeds starts to suck the car to the ground the splitter doesn't scrap the tarmac but the front wing gets closer to the ground.

When you mention splitters your talking about the bib/tray, the front floor of the car and not the turning vanes underneath the front wing? I think issue was raise a few years back, with teams designing the front floor so that it could flex. I believe the regs later outlawed them.
Bib/Front Splitter, Tray

Plus I'm also interested in why you think mclaren understand it when they claim they don't.

Can it be the same? Weren't the floors mounted with springs in 2007 and then banned?
So the trick is to flex the splitter without it.

Reading between the lines, they do not understand it in the context of complying with the regulations.

How do we know the tray is being deflected? Would the front wing being further in ground effect be enough to explain what is occuring.

So, if I understand this well enough, the whole front of the car is being lowered and not just the front wing?
What explains the height difference compared to the suspension in the TV captures then?

With my limited technical knowledge I probably don't get the idea

If this is the case then its what I've being talking about circumventing the flexi aero regs. The tray/splitter is designed to pass the load tests but still exceed deflection limits by design under racing conditions.
However how sure can we be that this is occuring?

Perhaps that movement is normal.

The only thing I can think of, is that the connecting stay between the splitter and chassis is also connected to the front suspension internally Red Bull Front Splitter. As the front suspension is deflected upwards under aero load of the chassis deflecting downwards, it pulls the stay and front tray up via some sort of internal mechanism, thereby acting a little like an active ride system. However this is illegal but if it can pass the deflection test?

the theory about the flexing floor is really interesting, im not sure its the case but, i just think it would be to obvious of an moveable aero device. But i dont know. About the frontwing. It would be nice if we could get some figures on how much load there is on the wing at high speed. If its 3or4 times that of the test then it will be pretty simple to copy. But i think thats to easy. Maybe the wing pass the test because it works in conjuction with other parts/loads. Forexamble like in this pic. Maybe the load in the middle is what triggers the bend. The wing is made just to pass the test, but in conjuction with pressure elsewhere it flexes.

The pressure on the right front cables is quite telling isn't it? They tested it back in December and McLaren and other teams bar Ferrari did not pick this obvious one up?
Just look at this picture from Hockenheim. The outside of the front wing (right FWEP) is much closer to the ground than the right. So the flexing seems to happen asymmetrical.

I think most of that can be attributed to chassis roll. It would be interesting to compare with a similar shot of the McLaren.

You're probably right, it's chassis roll. The outer right is under more pressure and thus the suspension bows down more.

Agreed, i only used this pic to show/explain my theory, i think the flex in this pic is pretty normal. My point is, when you look at the darren pictures, of the cars driving in a straight line, its obvious how much flex is going on. I just think that maybe the reason the redbull is flexing so much is a combination of flex more then one place. Because the wing need to pass the test. Offcourse if the actual load on the wing is much higher then the test, making it flex will be very easy, to easy i think. Know if something triggers it, a flex elsewhere. The principle is a bit like the fduct, where a small flow of air directs the big airflow into the right channel. I dont know. I just hope Mclaren finds a solution.

Just one more theory shot:

In test, force is applied vertically, maybe as wind applies force "horizontally" (and wing transforms it in downforce) the wing can use the "horizontal" force to somehow flex or roll or turn it down.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself enough (I'm spanish)

No. The corner is cambered and there is a rolling effect during cornering.

And then they use the adjustable front flap to multiply the downforce and droop the FWEP...

Generally speaking that would require alot more force to push it down from a 'horizontal' arm. Torque = Force x Distance. So a load applied at 'vertical' would have alot more effect, leading one to suspect that the current tests would show the flexing.
People have speculated on a non linear strength to the wing, allowing it to flex only after the testing point.
I would love to know where the actual test is applied on the wing.
From what I've read it's applied on the nose (ie to prevent the entire wing assy from flexing down). One would also assume they apply some sort of test to check for the wings straightening out, to provide less drag, at speed.
I'm sure McLaren know how to do this all, they were pretty good at it in the past. If I remember correctly Kimi's rear wing failure at hockenheim 2004 was put down to failure in the bonds where it was flexing.
As someone already pointed out what McLaren are saying, discreetly, is 'we don't understand how this is within the current regulations.'

This effect is further exaggerated by the front wing shifting towards the outside, as someone pointed out in the other thread, which is what is causing the bracing to tighten up on the outside.
What I was wondering is if there is any advantage to that, as surely it could be prevented if they wanted to.

It's in the regulations, set in centimeters, like 30 centimeters right to the center axis of the car, etc... you can calculate where exactly if you know the size of the car and the components.

The current test involves a ram applying a downward force of 500N over a surface area of 200 square cms approx. 100mm from the FWEP (795 mm from the car centre line).

I think it's a combination of things. If McLaren knew an easy way to copy the concept, they'd just do it. But it's probably a complicated affair, so it can't hurt to spread doubts about the legality. If somehow they succeed in getting it banned, all the better. It will have cost them nothing but both Ferrari and RB would have to take it off and lose performance.

I meant something more like this:

Right I know zip about proper physics and the laws about it. So here is my stupid theory. Neither the Ferrari or Red Bull are as horizontal as they should be. They can adjust it sufficiently through tyre pressure. The EBD only works if the front wing is working in conjunction with it. We are going back to the original argument with ride-height. Mclaren never fully worked it out. It looks like Ferrari have. Most things from the Red Bull were always easier to implement on the Ferrari as the looked at the Red Bull as the benchmark for the design innovations.

Ah, I should have bothered to read the regs.
Thats interesting then, given the flex is occurring at the outside of the wing. One would assume then that they have made the wing strong enough to sit within the rules but if they moved the test further outboard it would come closer to being too much flex.
Or am I reading it wrong? "applied over 200cm sq" at approx 100mm from the FWEP, how can that be? Is that the center of the applied force so it is actually applied from the edge of the FWEP in?

Yeah, shove a metal plate across the wing till the test points, and keep the bendy carbon fibre on the end. (Something to that effect, obviously not metal)

I think we shouldn't take what the team has been saying by the word. I think after the ride height fiasco when the were clearly announcing we would bring it though it wasn't legal before seeing that challenged. So the team is rightfully more cautious on such issues

The FIA test is 500N, which equates to around 50kg, so a pretty easy test to pass I imagine.

It is just me or am I seeing the whole front body flexing?

Funny this is coming out now. I had my suspicions since Aus Qualifying.. Can someone find that Video of Seb Vet's Qualy run? The Flexing there was also very marked..

McLaren had better cancel the summer holidays then...lot of work to do to catch up.

I think it's mainly just the change in the light. What we can't see is the bottom half of the nose cone which may well be flexing down.
In any case the wing is moving more than 10mm

No it is clearly not the light, if you look at the lines that take apart the light from the shadow, you will see they moving. Light does not do that.

I think the wing is actually moving that part...

The centre of the test pad would be 795mm from the centre line, meaning that its outside edge would be approx 100mm from the endplate.

That is a very misleading gif, you can see by the rubber marks on the track that one clip is on a straight and the other is under heavy braking going into a corner.

It really depends. If this innovation is designed to flex in a particular manner or does so in non-linear manner then it would be clearly illegal. It would be the very definition of a movable aerodynamic device.

I'm assuming the GIF is made up of photos taken at different parts of the track. The person who posted it is new here and not offered an explanation so.....

In both cases, it doesn't matter, pics are from the same camera and body is in the same position, so I'd say it is flexing. You can actually see it flexing due to how the light reflects on it...

It would be flexible aero, but it wouldn't be illegal because there is a test that points if its legal or not, and they passed it successfully.

Pretty sure it doesn't matter if its bumpy or smooth, braking zone or not.

To me it looks like the entire nosecone element is flexing a great deal, not just the wing.

................ and as we saw in 2007 with Ferrari's flexible floor, the test would be changed to counter the design.

At this stage we don't quite what is going on. The idea that this is related to upward flexing of the bib/splitters is interesting becuause that would be a different approach to achieving a similar result to what Ferrari did with the flexi-floor. My knowledge is not anywhere near advanced enough as to how this would affect the airflow aft towards the diffuser.

That isn't actually relevant when the car is on track - people seem to be confusing the 2.

The "pass test" is a static load of 50Kg "downforce" with a maximum of 10mm deflection.
The wing flex you are seeing might be at 200-250Kg downforce. I'm not suggestng a linear realationship between downforce and flex, but when (say) 5 times the amount of downforce is applied - it's not entirely unreasnable to expect the front wing to flex by "significantly" more than 10mm. The gif shows how much downforce cars produce, not that Red Bull are cheating.