flynfrog wrote:I say let every have flexy wings what do they hurt?
actually very little. historically wings were supposed to be fixed for two reasons. early active wing cars 1967-1969 were unreliable and malfunctioned and bendy wing were more likely to fail.
there were some bad accidents including Rind's in Barcelona 1969.
the wings had to be fixed to the chassis instead of the suspension.
note the totally different wing mountings of this Lotus 1970
then came the era of ground effect and they did not bother so much with wings until in the 90ties aerodynamic was the one decisive issue. wings were designed to bend in order to reduce drag at high speed. and back were the wing failures. so the old rules were reinforced and extended.
One reason for not allowing performance increasing flexible or movable wings was the problem of curbing performance. F1 allways had to cut back on performance to keep speeds safe because it was so innovative.
I guess that with the new fuel saving philosophy flexible or movable wings will be allowed sooner or later. it will probably be inserted in a rule package when power cut happens anyway. as it looks 2013 could be the year.