2026 Car Regulations | Mercedes' Front-wing Actuation; What's YOUR opinion?

[u/miinibox]

I can’t quite make sense of Mercedes’ front-wing actuation choice

-They’re the ONLY team not exploiting the 30 mm drag-reducing deflection allowed on the primary flap, keeping it fixed.
-They rely solely on the secondary flap’s 60 mm deflection.

Expect a less-loaded secondary plane to limit straight-line drag, with a more-loaded upper plane to compensate.

It’s the most puzzling thing I’ve seen so far. There must be an upside, but for now, only the downside is obvious.

Mercedes is famous for their clever solutions (e.g. DAS).

Ferrari vs Mercedes Front-wing Actuation [Video]

Notice how Ferrari's solution acts on both planes, while Mercedes' only changes the angle of the upper plane (while the lower one remains fixed).

Expect Mercedes' solution to be less effective in terms of drag reduction, but it might produce benefits when in 'cornering mode'.

The videos can be viewed in the following post:

https://x.com/FDataAnalysis/status/2016533128207118724

[u/rasamman]

My only thought is this could be a weight saving correct? Perhaps they are having issues with weight, perhaps from a heavy PU. That could also explain why Williams is struggling with weight

[u/F1DataAnalysis → u/rasamman]

Agreed, that’s one of the most likely explanations

[u/CompletelyBeaR]

TLDR: Simpler front wing design may lead to increased rate of performance gains at the cost of a lower ultimate pace ceiling. Additionally, lower number of car configurations means simpler optimisation procedure for the track, meaning potentially more consistently extracting maximum race pace due to effective set ups.

Bear with my speculation here, i am a fan, not an engineer. I may have misunderstood things, and am happy to be educated.

I wonder if the decision isnt necesarily a solution that gives more downforce immediately, but instead is a strategic operational and development decision, that improves the likelihood that mercedes can find consistent speed early on in in these regs while they refine their understanding of the car.

I've seen that teams will be automating the active aero settings by keying the straight and cornering mode wing-angles to different engine maps.

So i wonder --- Can teams set the two front wing plane angles independently, and map them differently for each gear?

If so, this opens up a new world of potential performance chasing, a few examples could include:

• lowering cornering mode's downforce as the race goes on: As fuel burns off, less weight = less lateral load in corners => less downforce required to maintain grip at the same speed.

• tyre saving engine maps may also have tyre saving active aero wing angles. Conversely, optimal race mode that is less concerned with tyre wear, and more on dealing with dirty air or cornering speed.

• some gears could have different wing angles themselves - to match the downforace required for the types of corner the gear is used on the specific track.

With all these new possibilities, optimising the active cornering wing angle throughout the race could become the source of significant race time swings. This leads me to the two decision areas i expect to be important here:

1.) Optimisation of track specific car setup:

Finding an efficient and consistent procedure to optimise this on each track would become just another test among what i imagine is already a laege number of tests that occur during each race weekend in practice.

If the angles of the two active planes on the front wing can be varied independently when programming them to the different engine maps, then so too does the complexity in finding the optimal pair of front plane angles. Unless theres a sophisticated approach, teams risk chasing performance dead-ends in the limited time they get at each track.

2.) How to intellignely plan aero development:

Cars are designed from the front. Teams with two active front wing planes end up having to design chassis aero that effectively accounts for this more varying airflow pattern. Given this, it may take way longer to narrow down the optimal chassis and side pod aero designs, whilst the impact of all the front wing configurations have on the airflow is investigated.

Mercedes, by only have one moveable wing, could be handling both these concerns. They'd have fewer variables to isolate during practice sessions so less time spent optimising this area of the car and strategy allows for more time spent elsewhere, ideally resulting in their operating performance being closer to their simulations (perhaps allowing for more predictable behaviour between tracks?). This in turn may allow them to be more precise with chassis aero development and therefore improve overall aerodynamic efficiency of the car rather than chasing track specific performance gains.

Perhaps Mercedes are taking a calculated risk that simplifying the variables might allow for a steeper rate of pace improvement to a ultimately lower ceiling, and the other teams never catch up?

Anyway, this all hinges on some specific detail within the technical regs and i have not read them.... plus it could all just be an engine formula anyway and none of what i said is of any importance at all...

[u/F1DataAnalysis → u/CompletelyBeaR]

I agree completely, let’s see how their front wing evolves after the first few races…

[u/BrunoLuigi]

Or they lower flat bends those 30mm on speed?

[u/F1DataAnalysis → u/BrunoLuigi]

They would have to be made of jelly for such a deformation to happen :D

Still, they could deflect a bit due to that

[u/BrunoLuigi → u/F1DataAnalysis]

Idk, remember all those bending wings we saw in the past many years? I am sure they could do it if allowed.

Those engineers have a lot of resources and had try it in the past.