The Singapore Grand Prix held on the notorious Marina Bay Street Circuit has always been perhaps Formula 1’s most challenging race, but a new FIA directive may make it even tougher.
According to Motorsport.com, the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), the governing body of F1 and most other worldwide motorsports, is introducing a new technical directive to crack down on front and back wing flexibility. The directive is essentially tightening up rules on an already-existing directive on wing flexibility that was introduced last year.
To simplify matters, the directive aims to tackle teams skirting the rules by making the front and back wings more flexible than they should be, through the use of what the FIA refers to as “mechanisms.” The FIA has insinuated that such mechanisms could be hidden beneath rubber coverings on their car and could pass inspection from the FIA outside of the track but bend when more resistance is placed on the car during an actual race where conditions would be much more intense.
Motorsport.com spoke with the FIA’s single-seater race director Nikolas Tombazis on the kind of things the FIA will be looking for when it inspects F1 cars ahead of the Singapore GP:
“If under a carbon surface, we have levers that allow a deflection in one direction and not in another, we can consider this a mechanism. Another thing we have said in the past is that it’s not acceptable when a component has relative motion against an adjacent element, sliding in a different direction [from it].
What happened recently? Some teams have components adjacent to each other that have a fairly high movement but do not slide [in tandem] because these areas are covered with rubber material. We do not consider this acceptable and, for this reason, we have made a clarification.”
It is unknown exactly which teams — if any — this new technical directive may effect over the race weekend. While it’s unlikely to end the recent streak of Red Bull domiance, some teams may find themselves hunting for tenths should they come at odds with the new crack down during testing over the grand prix.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3]