A Mercedes front-wing endplate design and Aston Martin’s “unusual” rear-wing concept – the latter of which was first introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix – have both been banned under the F1 technical regulations for next season.
While they complied with the regulations and were deemed legal by the FIA, both designs caused a stir because they appeared to contradict the key intention of making F1’s new era of cars easier to follow.
Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the FIA’s head of single-seaters Nikolas Tombazis said: “Obviously this year they were both legal. The regulations have changed on both the front and the rear in different ways to stop those solutions.”
He continued: “Some of these things where we changed the rules are in that category.
“But that article [3.2] wasn’t intended that: ‘Okay, if you’re smart and you have a solution, we’re going to take it off the car immediately.’ It just gave an explanation about sometimes why we have to intervene with the regulations.
“But we’ve still done it via governance. We don’t have the right to just say: ‘we don’t like this, let’s ban it.'”
Asked if there was anything he wanted to change in the regulations, F1 chief technical officer Pat Symonds said: “No I don’t think so, I think we need to let them develop.
“There are a few little tweaks, we saw that unusual rear wing on the Aston Martin earlier in the year and the regulations have been tweaked to not allow that next year because it had the potential to go in the wrong direction.
“But overall, I am pretty pleased with it.”
Symonds also confirmed further tweaks to the floor area will be made to combat the issues caused by porpoising, a phenomenon which returned to F1 this season and dominated the headlines early in the year.
“There are some small changes to the floor next year, not to try to eliminate but to reduce the amount of bouncing we are getting on the cars, but no, we have really got to consolidate now,” he added.
“It would be wrong to do a lot of changes.”
