FURTHER TECH INNOVATION TESTING F1’S NEW RULES

Aston Martin shocked F1 with its Fernando Alonso signing the day after the Hungarian GP, but it had already caused a storm at that event. This was with its new rear wing, which featured vertical elements added after Aston’s engineers seemingly found a loophole in the rules regarding an apostrophe-shaped rolled over section. This appears to go against F1’s intention to reduce airflow disruption to following cars without the endplates from the previous era.

Aston downplayed its performance benefits, but it raised the potential of others working within the rules to put their results above F1’s aims of wanting closer racing – as is their raison d’etre.

So far, only Aston’s earlier move to switch to a car concept that closely mirrors what Red Bull had been running since testing – the green team insists it had been working on that approach since before its initial design was unveiled – and the flexi-floor tricks around porpoising have led to tech-based spats this year. But this could quickly spiral if the FIA doesn’t intervene to close the loophole alongside its work to get the 2026 rules signed off (which would end Red Bull’s wait to announce its Porsche tie-up).

The major performance differentiators with the current cars are generally hidden out of sight in floor performance, with one technical director recently indicating to Autosport that, of the various approaches deployed so far, there is no single ‘game-changer’ like the double diffuser of 2009. This also doesn’t include the different bodywork designs used across the grid, so raises the possibility that even if some upgrades are implemented against the spirit of the rules, the cars will at least continue to look different even within the expected usual degree of design convergence.