Flexiwings: Red Bull's and Mercedes's revival, innovation or in breach?

Flexible aeropdynamic components have been under the FIA's watchful eye for a long time now, with the latest attempt to cap the aerodynamic phenomenon introduced at the 2025 Spanish Grand Prix, ironically after Red Bull Racing were amply vocal about their concerns regarding McLaren's front wing flexibility.

Aked if it's true that both Red Bull and Mercedes are in fact using flexible front wings, Bianchi said: "Yes, it's true. Mercedes and Red Bull have brought a new front wing each in Singapore. These new front wings were made with such carbon fibre that the top flaps flex at high speed, while still passing the FIA static tests."

The way the flexible front wings work is fairly simple as GPblog's technical expert explains.

In Singapore George Russell and Max Verstappen went on to finish P1 and P2 during the race. Despite using flexible front wings the pair mustn't fear being stripped of their results.

He continued: "This solution is legal because these front wings pass the FIA static tests: after the Spanish GP, the new rules state that, under a load of 100N (around 100 kg) the mainplane can't flex of more than 10 mm, while the top two flaps can't flex more than 3 mm under a lot of 60 N.

How big is the impact from the flexible front wings? Significant, says Bianchi, since its benefits are felt in various areas of the car, although, there's an essential caveat.

"These kind of wings make quite a difference, but it's the whole package that matters," GPblog's technical expert says.

Nevertheless, Red Bull can still benefit from this concept's implementation. "At the same time, these solutions give more freedom in terms of set-up, because teams can adopt higher downforce set-ups and, thanks to the wings bending, their cars can still have a very good speed on the straights, while taking advantage of the higher load in corners," Bianchi explained.

Red Bull introduced the flexible front wing, Bianchi believes, to increase "the load generated on the front axle, to make the car more balanced in slow speed corners, where they've been suffering since the beginning of the year.

He added: "But clearly, the wing flexing could also make the car more balanced on other types of circuits. COTA for them will be a crucial test, to see if this wing can bring benefit also in medium/high speed corners."

With teams halting their 2025 car's development to focus every resource on 2026, the Austrian and German teams stand to benefit substantially from their respective upgrades. GPblog's technical expert argues though, that Red Bull's and Mercedes' outlooks are vastly different.

"I think this can represent quite a big of an advantage for both teams," he says.

"For Red Bull they already have a more well-rounded car after the last few updates, which means that they can take a bigger advantage, because they are already quick on different layouts," Bianchi concluded.

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