On the straights, the upper element of the rear wing flexes and lifts slightly giving a drs-like effect. Would this be considered cheating or is it inside the rules. Picture one is on the straight at about 320 km/h. Picture two is after braking into the corner.

Breaking news, after multiple complaints the FIA has banned the flexing rear wing introduced by Mclaren. As expected the regulations do not allow the DRS flap edges to bend, even if the rear wing passes the FIA static deflection tests.

https://x.com/tgruener/status/1837087623434903593

I know there is no cooldown lap at spa, so assume Russel just crashes on the straight. He loses significant amounts of his car. Would he retain the win, as his car wouldn’t be weighed (or if it is weighed, it would obviously be below min weight but for good reason I.e. pieces of car have come off) ?

48.12 If the clerk of the course considers it safe to do so, and the message "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" has been sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system, any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car. This will only apply to cars that were lapped at the time they crossed the Line at the end of the lap during which they crossed the first Safety Car line for the second time after the safety car was deployed.

Having overtaken the cars on the lead lap and the safety car these cars should then proceed around the track at an appropriate speed, without overtaking, and make every effort to take up position at the back of the line of cars behind the safety car. Whilst they are overtaking, and in order to ensure this may be carried out safely, the cars on the lead lap must always stay on the racing line unless deviating from it is unavoidable. Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.

If the clerk of the course considers track conditions are unsuitable for overtaking the message "OVERTAKING WILL NOT BE PERMITTED" will be sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system.

“All competitors”

Apparently Red Bull has filed a complaint about McLaren running an additional air intake for cooling that are not permitted by FIA. From what I understand, McLaren were using these unregularly. So sometimes they were open and sometimes closed, which I guess breaches parc ferme aswell, when done after all FP sessions are over, since its technically a modification to the set up of the car. According to Red Bulls observations, the intakes were open during last race, When FIA was inspecting McLaren's cars following up on the complaint, they had taped those intakes shut. Does anyone have any additional info or something about this?

Two very identical scenarios only one penalized? Why did lap 1 differ when both VER and NOR ran off track but lap 53 NOR was penalized? Would both drivers not gain an advantage of running off track? Theoretically it should cancel the advantage gained out? I don't quite understand/agree with the FIA decision making a lot recently. You have two people contending for the championship on closing laps why not just let them race fairly? I feel as if it will be a year decided by the FIA not the driving.

Before i start, yes this topic has been beaten to death already and there have been dozens of threads, yet this particular issue has never been raised AFAIK so i wanted to open a discussion about it. This will also be a long post so i understand if its boring.

Mercedes claimed in their protest that all lapped cars should have unlapped and SC should have returned to the pits in the end of the following lap according to 48.12

However, instead of using the full text of 48.12, they cut out sentences from it and presented that in their protest document, or maybe only a summary was included in the Stewards' decision document. You can see it

Lets look at the full relevant text of 48.12, (I have removed the parts relating to lapped cars proceeding safely around the track after overtaking, because it has no relevance to the issue, although i have posted the link to full regulations below):

48.12 If the clerk of the course considers it safe to do so, and the message "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" has been sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system, any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car.

Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car is still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.

If the clerk of the course considers track conditions are unsuitable for overtaking the message "OVERTAKING WILL NOT BE PERMITTED" will be sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2021_formula_1_sporting_regulations_-_iss_11-_2021-07-12.pdf

If you have noticed, there are two preconditions before rest of the 48.12 can apply. First, the CoC should consider it safe to overtake.

Second, the message "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" has to be sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system.

Here it gets interesting. The specific required message for 48.12 to trigger, was never sent via the offical messaging system.

The message sent was instead : Lapped cars 4 - 14 - 31 - 16 - 5 to overtake Safety Car.

This means that 48.12 was never in force, and all lapped cars didn't have to unlap, and Safety Car didn't need to wait for one more lap. If 48.12 isn't in force, which regulation is enforced for SC to return to pits? As Race Director said in the Stewards meeting (

Article 48.13: When the clerk of the course decides it is safe to call in the safety car the message "SAFETY CAR IN THIS LAP" will be sent to all Competitors via the official messaging system and the car's orange lights will be extinguished. This will be the signal to the Competitors and drivers that it will be entering the pit lane at the end of that lap.

So how did the RD allow specific lapped cars to unlap? Thanks to Article 48.8. Lets take a look at it.

48.8 With the exception of the cases listed under a) to h) below, no driver may overtake another car on the track, including the safety car, until he passes the Line (see Article 5.3) for the first time after the safety car has returned to the pits. The exceptions are: a) If a driver is signalled to do so from the safety car.

There are no limits in the regulations as to which drivers Safety Car can signal to overtake, so Safety Car enabled the green lights at the back which signalled the lapped cars behind to overtake, and closed the signalling light after Vettel has passed.

This was further communicated to the drivers via the Race Control messaging system.

https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2021_formula_1_sporting_regulations_-_iss_11-_2021-07-12.pdf

So according to the regulations, Race Director and Race Control was fully in the clear and their actions were not in violation of the Sporting Regulations.

You can ask even if legal, why did RD took the actions he did?

Obviously you need to be in the Race Control room to fully understand their view, but here is my take on it.

Race Director had two goals in his mind:

1- Don't be seen as helping one driver over the other. This means he wants to follow the precedent of unlapping lapped cars to enable racing between the front-running drivers. Never in history has lapped cars stood between the leaders on a clear dry track after the unlapping procedures were introduced.

2- Honor the agreement made by all teams to finish the race under green flag conditions.

The problem arised when the track conditions become clear at the end of Lap 56, after the CoC sent the message that said lapped cars will not be allowed to overtake.

Another misconception is that Masi first decided that lapped cars will not be allowed to overtake, but later changed his mind. Although it was always the CoC that made the initial decision according to the regulations.

In my opinion, it was a mistake by the CoC to hastily send that first message while it was possible that track would clear in time later.

When the track was cleared at the end of lap 56, RD didn't want to be seen as biased as he would have been accused of helping Lewis cruise to a win even though the track was clear and the precedent was lapped cars unlapping.

But now another issue came into play, if he unlapped all cars, he would not be able to honor the teams agreement to finish the race under green flags, which was highly desirable and in this case possible under the regulations.

So the RD made a compromise following the precedent and the spirit of the regulations, while also not being in violation of the letter of the law.

When unlapping procedures were introduced in 2012 by the FIA, this reason was given as to why the new rules were in place:

"The rule will reduce the chance of races restarting with lapped drivers in between the front-running drivers."

With his final decision, RD in his mind satisfied both the precedent and honored the teams agreement, and also would be in clear of any bias accusations.

He was also making all these decisions under constant pressure from the team bosses and dealing with clearing the incident.

Its already a very long post, so i am ending it here. I am sure many will still disagree with my arguments, but i hope now atleast people will stop accusing the Race Director of being malicious or rigging the race. He had many other opportunities before if he wanted such an outcome, he obviously didn't take them.

Im talking about that sharp edge. If the other car tyre touches that its for sure gonna puncture it. Is this legal?

It thought the driver had to be weighed exactly as they came out of the car post race. Carlos was clearly handed a watch before weigh-in. Even if filled with lead it couldn't weight more than a few ounces. Can they tell from the load sensors that they are under by such a small amount? Could they have been concerned about to much weight being lost to sweating in the heat?

You know why no other motorsport allows active aero? Because it bolsters dirty air and reduces slipstream. It's rule number 1 of racing regulations - its why GT3's have bolt-on wings while their road-going counterparts are shapeshifting. In the 2026 F1 regs, teams will be able to toggle between aero modes on most straights at all times - which means dirty downforce creating a huge wake in the corner, and Monza trim down the straights.

To substantiate this - MotoGP has stumbled its way into active aero with the advent of RHD's in the last few years. Riders have complained, ratings have plummeted, overtakes have declined. And our bikes at speed generate about 10% of an F1 car's overbody downforce alone. Mercifully the FIM agreed to a ban of the devices.

Despite this, DRS is getting removed in 2026. I hate it as much as the next guy but removing the aid that makes 3+ tenths on a straight when you'll have these Project 400 monsters making reduced slipstream, is a recipe for disaster.

Downforce decreased by 30%? Surely that is SOME good news for the following car? Nope - its all been sourced from lovely clean ground effect.

There is a "DRS replacement" for the following car, in the form of an ERS boost. How exciting! Thats way better than DRS, it can be used anywhere including small straights (DRS potency is exponential with speed), gives diversity in overtaking and maybe even a challenge to control the traction!

Oh, it only STARTS to activate at 290kph. And its a gradient that only really kicks in around 310-320. Its somehow even less diverse than DRS. Now every motorway overtake will become even more redundant, and every straight less than a kilometre will be abandoned.

And it depletes the battery so there's not even intrinsic gain for the following car like DRS. Which is so critical when dirty air is gonna be a problem! Funny DRS train battles will perish - now each position swap is a huge battery depletion, if the guy can even get close.

They must be hoping that their vaunted "inwash" effect can save the day. But it doesn't fill me with hope that their last amendment from November was to allow more front wing and bargeboard appendages to "claw back some lap time". I think 2026 is going to be a massive struggle for on-track action.

To people who think the sleuths at the FIA are trustworthy enough to avoid this cock-up - they sat on extensive ground effect for 40 years when it was the cure for dirty air all along, they forced hybrids through while bankrupting 2 teams and providing little value to anybody, and they commissioned the 2017 regs. Also traction control shouldn't've lasted until 2007.

Its a shame because people will conflate this latest gaffe with the car size reduction, which is a brilliant first step towards tiny, agile, raceable ones. Small (particularly narrow) cars are the best way to create exciting racing. But with extreme dirty air, racing can never initiate in the first place.

(Not to mention it is a markedly small step: Weight reduction is half of what was gained between 2021 and 2022 even IF theres no backsliding. And dimension reductions are less than half of 2016-to-17s gain.)

Does this match the public sentiment? Most of the F1 fans I've talked to haven't even looked at the regs. But im interested to hear some opinions because you guys are far more clued in to F1 than I am. I'd particularly like to hear from an expert about the active aero stuff, because I am no expert but I find it hard to believe active aero was a productive solution here? And apologies for my mutilation of jargon across this post - I feel like I still made my points clear.

Just something that came to mind... hear me out: During a push lap someone locks-up and flat spots their tyres, and they have just enough time to get in, change the tyres, and do one more push lap... and as they are coming into the pits, they're called by the officials for the weighing process and that's it, or some other scenario like this... you get the gist. And has something similar happened in the past??

Say a car is running at the back, and is lapped by the leader. If a red flag comes then they are put in P20 for the restart. They then charge through the field and cross the chequered flag in P1. Are they awarded the win? They didn't drive the full race distance.

Basically title. After 26s regulations we're announced everyone moaned about "they need to be smaller", but theoretically how small can they be while still being the fastest category and without making them unsafe?

I know this is a situation that will probably never happen, but Google wouldn't find me answer.

Let's say a team would somehow have such a ridiculous good car their drivers would finish 1-2 each race. And not just that, it's a draw on points for the drivers. Looking at the race results, not only do they tie on points, but also on race results. How would the championchip be decided. Usually it's decided on most 2nd places etc untill a driver has more wins on that position over the other, but in this case it ties up on both wins and 2nd places, both drivers never have had any other position than that.

In this situation, how do they pick the winner?

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