Flexy Wings Explained

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 2/3 weeks you’ll have heard a lot about flexy wings. But what does it actually mean to have flexible wings and what do they actually do.

Well, flexy wings are always a part of F1, purely from the fact that if the wings were built solid they would shatter due to the huge downforce the cars create at high speed. However, the FIA brought rules into play that would not allow teams to extend their flex wings past a certain point. This is due to it benefitting top speed and cornering.

Bare with ladies and gents...

As you climb up the gears and speed increases your wings compress under load, thus making the face of the wings drop and having less drag when getting towards your supposed “top speed”. Then when you slam on the brakes and the downforce from the high speed falls off the car, your wings move their way back to their “natural position” giving you the downforce and cornering potential you need.

Basically if you can run flexible wings, you can be mega fast down the straights at no cost of losing downforce for cornering.