While the Formula 1 championship took another twist at the Monaco Grand Prix as Lando Norris closed the gap to McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri down to just three points, greater intrigue welcomes the 2025 Spanish GP.
Stricter tests will be used in a bid to prevent excessive flexing of wings on F1 cars, with changes already having been made earlier this season.
So what is changing and what will it mean for the pecking order at the Spanish GP?
Rear wing changes at the Spanish GP
In an FIA explanation, Single Seater director Nikolas Tombazis says: “When championship battles become intense, teams tend to focus on each other’s cars a lot, and naturally they raise concerns and over the latter half of the season we came to the conclusion that we needed to toughen a bit more the tests for 2025.”
After McLaren‘s rear wing was put under the spotlight by rivals last season for its ‘mini-DRS’ effect through flexing, deformation was addressed by the 2025 regulations. Article 3.15.17 dictated that the distance between the mainplane and slot gap should not vary by more than 2mm under a 75kg vertical load.
“The 2025 regulations were designed to counteract the so-called ‘mini-drs effect’ that became quite a talking point in the autumn of last year,” added Tombazis. “That test was applied from the start of the season, but it soon became apparent it was insufficient.”
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But further changes were made after video analysis at the Australian GP, with the tolerance reduced to 0.5mm by the Japanese GP.
Front wing changes
But changes to the front wing tests have been anticipated for Round 9 at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, a delay to tweaks that left some on the grid unhappy.
“Over a sequence of races at and following the Belgian Grand Prix we installed cameras on the front wings of all cars and again we concluded that the tests would need to be toughened,” says Tombazis.
“That conclusion was arrived at quite late in the year, however, and we felt that if we had introduced extra tests at the start of this season, it would have been tough on teams and may have led to existing front wings being scrapped, and extra expense. Therefore, we felt that deferred introduction was more sensible.”
Previously, deflection of the front wing [in terms of front wing bodywork flexibility] was allowed to a tolerance of no more than 15mm if vertical load was applied to both side of the car and no more than 20mm if load was applied to just one side of the car.
Those values are reduced by 5mm from this weekend on.
For the front wing flap flexibility, the regulations previously stipulated that “any part of the trailing edge of any front wing flap may deflect no more than 5mm, when measured along the loading axis, when a 6kg point load is applied normal to the flap”. That value drops to 3mm from this weekend.
“Obviously it is fair for the FIA to add more flexibility tests or stiffness tests when it judges that a certain area may be getting exploited a bit too much, but yes, we hope it will be the last time we’ll do anything for this year.”
What do team principals think?
Toto Wolff: “I think what we have seen is that Ferrari was probably most conservative on flexi-wings. What it’s going to do on the pecking order is something we need to look at. I’m not sure it will [change things] but another angle of curiosity – and I don’t know how it is going to go.”
Fred Vasseur: “At least we are working on [the front wing] for ages now and this can be a gamechanger for everybody, because we don’t know the impact on every single team of the new regulation. We’ll stick to this [at Barcelona], be focused on this to have the better explanation of the new front wing.”
Christian Horner: “It’s a significant change and so of course there will be some effect. Now of course, the teams have anticipated that so it may well be neutral, or maybe it will have some effect on degradation. It doesn’t make life easier.”
What to expect from the Spanish GP
McLaren should again be the favourite for victory but, if Red Bull in particular is to be believed, the Woking-based outfit is set to lose out most with the wing changes.
That shouldn’t be taken as gospel, however, so it may well be another chance for Norris and Piastri to stretch further away from Max Verstappen.
The Dutchman has had a good record in Spain in recent years however, while Ferrari will be boosted by Charles Leclerc‘s strong showing at his home grand prix in Monaco.
Williams will hope to return to the top of the midfield after losing out to Racing Bulls’ cunning strategy last weekend, while Fernando Alonso will be crossing everything that his Aston Martin can get him to the end of a race after missing out on points again when a mechanical issue struck last Sunday.
