Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff isn’t concerned with the legality of the front wing on its 2024 Formula 1 challenger, despite question marks over its innovative design.
The design itself and the loophole it has discovered refers to a slight piece of carbon fibre just a few millimetres in diameter that connects the nose cone to the third flap of the front wing.
As per the FIA regulations, each segment (or flap) of the front wing must have its rearmost edge concealed by the following segment when viewed from above – for example, the second segment’s rear edge must be concealed by the front edge of the uppermost third segment.
To navigate this regulation, Mercedes has used a thin carbon fibre wire to connect the third segment of the front wing to the nose of the W15 to maintain within the rules by obscuring the second segment’s rear edge, but in turn, reducing the surface area of the third segment to reduce drag and manage airflow more efficiently.
“What’s been put on a car is always following an exchange with the FIA, all through the process,” Wolff told media in Wednesday’s testing press conference.
“It’s not such a thing where you have a clever idea and then you bolt it on to test and you think, ‘That could be or couldn’t be challenged’.
“That’s a long process of dialogue that happens over the winter. I feel we’re in an OK place.”
Despite Wolff’s confidence, it only takes a so-called ‘loophole’ to prove successful before questioning ramps up and teams start to challenge its legality further.
Particularly in the cost-cap era of F1, it’s more affordable for teams to have an innovation ruled out as illegal, rather than spend time, money and resource on replicating it.
Furthermore, whilst Mercedes has drafted the design amid dialogue with the FIA, Formula 1’s Chief Technical Officer Pat Symonds sees a future where the W15 front wing is ruled out.
“Article 3 [of the regulations] dictates how the aerodynamic shapes are produced and it’s very clear in the opening statements, the rules aim to ensure we get this close following between cars],” Symonds told Sky Sports F1 pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz.
“So really when you start to get things that are perhaps producing some outwash – and what we’re seeing here is really trying to reinstate quite a strong vortex to push that very turbulent air that’s coming from the front wheel, to try and push it aside. – one question is ‘is that really within the spirit of the rules?’
“It’s within the regulations, the letter of the law, no doubt about it. But is that the sort of thing we want?
“I don’t know, that’s perhaps a bit more debatable. I think we need to know really how strong is the effect.
“The FIA now have a very good aerodynamic group. The group that used to work for me are capable of looking at this and saying ‘yeah, actually there’s nothing wrong with that’ or ‘this is starting a trend we don’t really want to see’. We’ll see.”
Symonds continued to argue for the ‘spirit of the rules’ and also the sport as a whole, given his remit over the past few years has been to encourage close racing.
“It’s more a question of what’s good for the sport rather than what’s good for Mercedes, what’s good for Red Bull,” Symonds added.
“And of course, I jumped the fence a few years ago so now I try to look at what’s good for the sport.
“And without a doubt what’s good for the sport is good close racing so anything that promotes good racing is good, and detracts from that is poor in my mind.”
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