Rear wing flex and FIA regulatory test 2021

[SmallSoldier]

Wouldn't the flexing issue be the same as speeding? If you are allowed X amount of pull resistance on the wing, as long as your wing meets that criteria, isn't the wing legal then? Same with speeding (If the speed limit is 50, as long as you are below that you are good).

This seems more like the speed limit being 100kph, but the neighbors are complaining that the 100 is too fast, so the police dept saying "we will reduce the limit to 80 starting next month". It's an odd move midseason, in my opinion.

No, it’s more like:

- The speed limit is 80 kph
- You know where the speed camera is
- You go at 80 kph or less until the speed camera
- Your neighbors notice that as soon as your past the camera, you go WOT and exceeding 100 kph
- The police comes in and put additional Speed Cameras to make sure you stop speeding


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I see it differently. Saying that they go the speed limit when ONLY when the camera is there is not what's happening here. The teams aren't "inflexible" when they get tested, then all of a sudden become flexible during the race. There is a standard set during testing... they adhere to the standard.

This is the way I see it:
- No flexing = No speeding
- Definition of Speeding = Exceeding the Speed limit.
- Definition of flexing = Falling outside the flex test.

If the rule states that no part of the car that affects aerodynamic can move... then every team, including mercedes, is "Cheating". From the rear wing, to the front wing, to the shark fin. Every aerodynamic part on every team should be scrutinized equally.

The reality is that the Red Bull wing is flexing more than it should, that’s why they have claimed already that they have to design a new one... If the flex in their wing would be linear, then they would have grounds to argue that no redesign is needed.

If the flex is engineered, they are indeed circumventing the rule in regards to rigid bodywork and fooling the test (because they are passing it)... Whether that is legal at the moment or not, is a different story and that’s why penalties will not be retroactive (aside from the fact that no team has protested the wings yet).

It will be interesting what the new tests (which include footage of the wings with markings) show if the additional flex is induced in the wing or not... The rule requires rigid bodywork, the tests allowed for certain deflection at certain load because they can’t be infinitely rigid, if the wing bends / flexes in a non-linear way then those with these types of wings are purposely exploiting the test and intentionally not meeting the overarching article 3.8.

If the teams will be able to show that the flex is indeed just a by product of the materials used (and not a design fixture) they would have a different an stronger argument than: We pass the test, it’s good... And... It is very costly to redesign it.


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[DChemTech]

You would be breaking the law, but there is still one critical difference: there is the unconditional, quantitative limit of 100kph that is defined. So, as an engineer, it is 100% clear what you need to design for. You can decide to cheat, but there is no ambiguity.

In the rigidity case, that limit is not there, as I stated before. There is no quantification how much 'flex' you can 'add', so it is not clear to design for. Or well, it is clear what to design for, since that is in article 3.9. But those are conditional limits, not unconditional, quantitative limits that describe on-track behavior. Still, it's all the engineers have, and all they can realistically aim to meet (and they are meeting it).

The rule is "no flexing", not "no flexing in excess of the limits defined by a test". Thus there is an absolute limit. The limit is zero.

As I stated before, "no flexing" is physically impossible. You need to state a tolerance. The only tolerances currently stated are in 3.9, and they are met. Asking for "no flexing" is asking engineers to come up with an infinitely rigid solution, without telling them how close to infinity they have to be practically.

[DChemTech]

I disagree. Speeding is quite a black-and-white issue; there is a fixed limit at a certain location, and either you break it or you don't.
Flexing is something that always happens to some degree, and as such there is some grey area between what is considered flexing and what is considered rigid. Which means you end up with standardized tests that state "under a load X, maximum displacement is Y" - in other words, the limit is implicit in the test. So, in changing the tests you actually change the limit (which is not the case when you add more cameras on a stretch of road). It would be a more similar case if the rules stated "the wing cannot displace/rotate more than Y under any condition" - just like with speeding, that makes it a black-and-white issue.

Wouldn't the flexing issue be the same as speeding? If you are allowed X amount of pull resistance on the wing, as long as your wing meets that criteria, isn't the wing legal then? Same with speeding (If the speed limit is 50, as long as you are below that you are good).

This seems more like the speed limit being 100kph, but the neighbors are complaining that the 100 is too fast, so the police dept saying "we will reduce the limit to 80 starting next month". It's an odd move midseason, in my opinion.

No, it’s more like:

- The speed limit is 80 kph
- You know where the speed camera is
- You go at 80 kph or less until the speed camera
- Your neighbors notice that as soon as your past the camera, you go WOT and exceeding 100 kph
- The police comes in and put additional Speed Cameras to make sure you stop speeding


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No, that is not the right analogy. There is no equivalent of the unconditional speed limit stated in the rules. Such a limit would be something like "A maximum [deformation/rotation] of X [mm/degrees] is allowed under any load that does not lead to structural failure of [the part in question[/i]. It's not there. "Adding more cameras" or using "more accurate cameras" would be stricter control on whether article 3.9 is met. But that is not what is happening. New, different speed limits are being introduced at previously undefined locations.

It is also not at all like the Ferrari fuel flow sensor in that sense. There was (allegedly) like the above analogy, where the limit was breached, but in such a way that it was not registered. But in this case there is no stated limit that is breached. The only limits that are stated are the conditions in 3.9, and they are met. If anything, it's more akin to Mercedes DAS; although the outcome may be undesirable in spirit, it's fully legal within the quantitative specifications. Outlawing it means changing specifications - putting up new requirements that the engineers could not originally have designed for, because the requirements weren't stated. Doing so during the season is highly undesirable. Hence, DAS was only declared illegal after the season, by sharpening the rules for the next.

But we've been through all this before several times now, and apparently it's not getting across. I'll try one more analogy. As you may guess from my screen name, I'm a chemical engineer. An analogous situation in my profession would be:

Boss: "Design me a new processing line to produce pure protein X"
Me: "I can't make 100% pure protein X, there will always be some contamination. I need tolerances on how pure, how much, etc."
Boss: "Ok, here is a list: 99% purity at 500 kg/day, and 99.5 when we produce 100 kg/day"
Me: *designs, commissions, etc.*
Boss: "Hey, screw you, we are running 2350 kg/day now and it's not pure!"
Me: "... well..but...you never specified anything for those conditions"
Boss: "blah blah, I need pure product under real conditions, now!"
Me: "well.. that might take significant design changes, it would have been nice if you specified what performance was needed under real conditions. Anyway, what is the purity you need under these 'real' conditions of 2350 kg/day?"
Boss: "Pure!"
Me: "... but.. that's not physically possible, I told you that"
Boss: "Pure! No contamination! It's in the rules!"

Now, this is what is happening. New conditions are being introduced when the process is already running, conditions that were not specified a-priori (and although the 'boss' claims they could be implied, that implication is physically impossible), and hence conditions that were never accounted for in the design.

[TimW]

It is a bit different than these analogies actually. It is more like dieselgate. You meet the criteria in the lab, but in real life conditions the performance is different to what the lab tests were trying to achieve. The RB wing seems to use aerodynamic loads components that are not simulated in the test (lateral loads on the endplates?) to get more deflection of the wing. It is just clever usage of the rules.

[DChemTech]

It is a bit different than these analogies actually. It is more like dieselgate. You meet the criteria in the lab, but in real life conditions the performance is different to what the lab tests were trying to achieve. The RB wing seems to use aerodynamic loads components that are not simulated in the test (lateral loads on the endplates?) to get more deflection of the wing. It is just clever usage of the rules.

Wasn't Dieselgate about software that tuned the performance based on whether test conditions were imposed or not? I would rank that more in line with the Ferrari fuel sensor issue, of deliberately fooling the measurement. And that is not the case here. There's no circumvention of measurements, nor are there changes to the equipment (hardware, in this case) between tests and real use.

[TimW]

It is a bit different than these analogies actually. It is more like dieselgate. You meet the criteria in the lab, but in real life conditions the performance is different to what the lab tests were trying to achieve. The RB wing seems to use aerodynamic loads components that are not simulated in the test (lateral loads on the endplates?) to get more deflection of the wing. It is just clever usage of the rules.

Wasn't Dieselgate about software that tuned the performance based on whether test conditions were imposed or not? I would rank that more in line with the Ferrari fuel sensor issue, of deliberately fooling the measurement. And that is not the case here. There's no circumvention of measurements, nor are there changes to the equipment (hardware, in this case) between tests and real use.

Hmm, maybe it was not such a good analogy after all

What I meant is that they purposely design something that passes the test but still deflects as much as they would like it. They do so by using a condition that does not exist in the lab. So that is a bit (little bit I guess ) like dieselgate, where the absence of movement led to a different behaviour than when moving.

Edit: I do not blame RB for doing so, I applaud them for doing so. But I also have no problems with Mercedes protesting it. It is all part of the game. Do not be fooled, also the Mercedes wing deflects, purposely, to reduce drag. If you look at it the AoA changes quite a bit, but without the whole wing moving down much. Also FW's deflect so much that I cannot imagine it not being intentional.

[Datco]

Can RBR just continue with the wing, get a 15 point penalty and just get a slap on the wrist at every race like RP did last year. Or is the rules different for them?

[Datco]

It is a bit different than these analogies actually. It is more like dieselgate. You meet the criteria in the lab, but in real life conditions the performance is different to what the lab tests were trying to achieve. The RB wing seems to use aerodynamic loads components that are not simulated in the test (lateral loads on the endplates?) to get more deflection of the wing. It is just clever usage of the rules.

Wasn't Dieselgate about software that tuned the performance based on whether test conditions were imposed or not? I would rank that more in line with the Ferrari fuel sensor issue, of deliberately fooling the measurement. And that is not the case here. There's no circumvention of measurements, nor are there changes to the equipment (hardware, in this case) between tests and real use.

Hmm, maybe it was not such a good analogy after all

What I meant is that they purposely design something that passes the test but still deflects as much as they would like it. They do so by using a condition that does not exist in the lab. So that is a bit (little bit I guess ) like dieselgate, where the absence of movement led to a different behaviour than when moving.

No give it up, it's not like diesel gate.

[DChemTech]

It is a bit different than these analogies actually. It is more like dieselgate. You meet the criteria in the lab, but in real life conditions the performance is different to what the lab tests were trying to achieve. The RB wing seems to use aerodynamic loads components that are not simulated in the test (lateral loads on the endplates?) to get more deflection of the wing. It is just clever usage of the rules.

Wasn't Dieselgate about software that tuned the performance based on whether test conditions were imposed or not? I would rank that more in line with the Ferrari fuel sensor issue, of deliberately fooling the measurement. And that is not the case here. There's no circumvention of measurements, nor are there changes to the equipment (hardware, in this case) between tests and real use.

Hmm, maybe it was not such a good analogy after all

What I meant is that they purposely design something that passes the test but still deflects as much as they would like it. They do so by using a condition that does not exist in the lab. So that is a bit (little bit I guess ) like dieselgate, where the absence of movement led to a different behaviour than when moving.

I guess it would work in a scenario like this:

You design a car + engine mapping that meets all the emission tests. There are no software loopholes or anything alike; the car that is driven in reality is exactly the same configuration that was used in the tests. Yet, people claim that during an offroad rally, your emissions are too high. There were no quantitative specifications on emissions in offroad rallies, only specifications for the test bench, which were met. Also now that people are saying emissions are "too high", they are not specifying what that means.

A hardware equivalent of the true dieselgate may be a moveable flap with a yield load that exceeds those imposed during tests. In that case you would have a configurational change, and could argue that 'the wing on track is not the same as the wing during the tests'. But that is not the case here, as far as I know.

[DChemTech]

Can RBR just continue with the wing, get a 15 point penalty and just get a slap on the wrist at every race like RP did last year. Or is the rules different for them?

Why? They didn't break any rules. (or more specifically, if you interpret 3.8 as literally no flexing, every team broke it - and if you consider the flexing tolerances stated in 3.9, no team broke it. There is no difference between RB and the other teams in whether or not they broke the rules - so either punish all, or none.).

[SiLo]

The fact that Red Bull admitted they would need to change the wing should be enough for 50% of these arguments to be put to bed.

[El Scorchio]

The fact that Red Bull admitted they would need to change the wing should be enough for 50% of these arguments to be put to bed.

Agree. I feel there is a fair amount of semantics and subjectivity going on. In the end, it doesn't matter what any of our personal opinions or interpretations of the situation are and if we agree with it. It only matters what the FIA conclude, regardless of whether we individually agree with the process they use or the outcome it leads to.

[DChemTech]

The fact that Red Bull admitted they would need to change the wing should be enough for 50% of these arguments to be put to bed.

I do not agree. RB stated that within the new test criteria they need to change the design. But that is because new test criteria impose new design criteria. It does not mean the wing was illegal under the old criteria.

If I go back to my protein factory analogy, it would be that I have to redesign because my boss decided to change the purity criteria all of a sudden. Not because I was not compliant with the criteria stated before.

[Big Tea]

There is also a lot of distraction by the phrase' flexing wing'. It is not the wing flexing, but the whole assembly physically displacing or moving. the movement is not a flex of the horizontal element, which is the 'thin' part, but the sturdy seeming support structure. I don't think the horizontal wing element is 'flexing' at all (well so little as to not be relevant)

[El Scorchio]

The fact that Red Bull admitted they would need to change the wing should be enough for 50% of these arguments to be put to bed.

I do not agree. RB stated that within the new test criteria they need to change the design. But that is because new test criteria impose new design criteria. It does not mean the wing was illegal under the old criteria.

Does any of that, apart from them saying they have to change the design, actually matter though?