F1 | The Racing Bulls front wing under the FIA’s new flexibility checks in Spain. At the Spanish GP, the FIA begins enforcing stricter front wing flexibility tests.

The moment has come: we have reached the hour of truth. In the FIA garage in Barcelona, there has been a constant flow since early morning when the technical inspections began. Teams have started a sort of pilgrimage to the garage where the gauge the International Federation uses to check wing flexibility is set up.

Starting precisely from the Spanish GP, the restrictions decided by Nikolas Tombazis’ staff even before the start of the 2025 season come into effect. Articles 3.15.4 and 3.15.5 of the 2025 Technical Regulations have been revised, which respectively govern the flexibility of the front wing and that of the flaps.

The original text established that, applying a load of 100 kg symmetrically on the two profiles of the front wing, the vertical flexing could not exceed 15 mm, while if the force was applied to only one side of the wing, the deflection could not be more than 20 mm.

Now the FIA changes the values, lowering them to 10 mm for the load on both sides and to 15 mm for the load on only one side of the car. Regarding the flexibility of the flaps, the regulation stated that “…any part of the trailing edge of each element of the front wing could not flex more than 5 mm, measured along the load axis, when a point load of 6 kg was applied perpendicularly to the flap.”

From Barcelona onwards, the tolerated flex will drop to just 3 mm, significantly limiting the possibility of creating a programmed deformation of the front wing. Teams have had a few months to figure out how to regain certain values by modifying the design and construction of individual elements with a different weave of the carbon fiber layers and by shifting the metal attachments that allow the composition of the… puzzle.

No one will be able to reproduce the values seen up to the Monaco GP, but it will be interesting to see who worked best in interpreting the new rule, which will have an important impact on the balance of the cars. In Roberto Chinchero’s images, we can observe the new Racing Bulls wing mounted on the gauge and that of Haas undergoing checks by the staff led by Jo Bauer.
Technical evaluations will continue tomorrow…