New F1 team Cadillac shocks paddock with aggressive 2026 aero already in wind tunnel. New entrant Cadillac is already developing clever flow diverters in the wind tunnel.

Cadillac already testing out-wash front wing tricks in the wind tunnel for 2026

The >Everyone thought the 2026 “agile car” regulations would finally put an end to the wild out-wash front wing designs that have dominated ground-effect F1 since 2022. Think again. Cadillac, the eleventh team set to join the grid, has just released wind-tunnel footage showing it is already experimenting with solutions that push airflow around the outside of the front tyre – the very concept the FIA desperately wanted to kill off.

The 2025 season has barely cooled down – Lando Norris and McLaren crowned champions, closing the book on the current ground-effect era – and the paddock is already deep into the next revolution: shorter, narrower, lighter cars built for wheel-to-wheel racing and sustainability.

These new machines were supposed to be a clean break from the past. The rules were written not by team bosses but by the manufacturers themselves in high-level summits, aiming to create cars that can follow closely without destroying tyres or losing huge downforce. Add active aero with Straight Line Mode – both front and rear wings opening together on straights to slash drag by around 20 % – and the original plan looked like power units would finally steal the spotlight, splitting performance 50/50 between combustion engine and electric motor.

Reality is turning out very different. Power units will matter (especially with e-fuels and a roughly 60 kg weight drop versus today’s cars), but aerodynamics is refusing to take a back seat. A short Cadillac wind-tunnel video published in recent days proves the point perfectly.

Freeze-frame the footage and you can clearly see aggressive flow diverters appearing on the outer “footplate” of the sidepod endplate – devices whose job is to shove airflow outboard of the front wheel, recreating the famous out-wash effect in everything but name.

Since 2022 teams have pushed front-wing endplates to absurd complexity, adding slots, blowers and vortex generators to fling clean airflow outside the tyre and create a dirty, turbulent wake for anyone trying to follow. The 2026 front-wing regulations were deliberately written to stop exactly that behaviour. Yet here is Cadillac – a team that hasn’t even turned a wheel in anger yet – already finding ways around the restrictions.

If the newest squad on the block is this advanced, imagine what Adrian Newey and the established aero departments are cooking up behind closed doors. Out-wash isn’t dead; it’s simply evolving. In Formula 1, nothing ever truly gets thrown away. Ever.