Red Bull has been hot on the return of potential mini-DRS tricks since Formula 1's pre-season test - so the FIA's move to quickly stamp out the practice has to be seen as a win for it.
As the team that was perhaps the most frustrated over the FIA's delay in introducing a clampdown on flexi front wings until mid-season, the no-nonsense approach that the governing body has taken on rear wings for China this weekend is very welcome at Red Bull.
This is especially true because Red Bull, which was once the master of flexi wings in the previous rules era, has been open that it is an area where others have gained much more than it has with the current cars.
Technical director Pierre Wache admitted to The Race over the winter that he felt his squad's advantage in the ground effect era had been wiped away by rivals being able to exploit flexi wings - because it negated an advantage it had found in perfecting car balance without aero elasticity tricks.
With McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari all pushing hard on the flexi wing front, Wache said: "We had some other aspect of the car which allowed us to rebalance the car. We benefitted from this for two years.
"The others introduced this front wing deflection to allow them to balance the car and, in that aspect, they are now in front of us. We could rebalance the car by other means, while the other teams used front wing deflection."
Judging from Wache's comments, it is clear Red Bull feels that anything that can rein back the gains others get from flexi wings will be a help - especially at a time when it is playing catch-up against a dominant McLaren car.
As one team source said: "The stiffer the wings get, the better it is for us."
But while Red Bull heads to the Shanghai weekend buoyed by both a stronger than expected start to the season in Australia, and the knowledge some of its rivals' antics have been shut down, what is not totally clear yet is just how much it stands to gain from what has happened.
And that is something we may not find out in China, as it may take a while for things to shake out before we even get to the front wing changes coming for Spain.
Immediate action
F1 teams have always been aware that the technical regulations leave the door open for the FIA to ramp up bodywork deflection tests whenever there are grounds to suspect anyone is messing around with flexi wings.
It is a freedom that has been used many times over the years but, as is the case for the new front wing checks coming for the Spanish Grand Prix, normally there is a fair bit of notice about any intended changes.
The FIA's approach is often pragmatic, in that it does not want to rush any changes through because that would make life difficult for any teams that need to make modifications to their car in the field.
That the FIA has chosen to enact its right to make an immediate change to rear wing load tests for the Chinese GP - giving teams just five days' notice before cars hit the track again - says an awful lot about how concerned it must have been about what is going on with the latest 'mini DRS' row.
There has been none of the drawn-out process of evaluating wings over several races - or indeed a good portion of the season - as happened with the front wings analysis that took place last year from the Belgian GP.
Instead, based on monitoring that the FIA conducted of rear wings at the Australian GP, as well as some checks that it conducted in the garages, it clearly felt that teams were pushing things too much.
Flexible rear wings had been back on the radar since the pre-season test in Bahrain, when onboard footage of several cars showed that some teams seemed to be exploiting a fair degree of aero elasticity at the back.
Wache went further and suggested that, after a winter when the FIA had tried to eradicate flexi rear wings and mini-DRS, the problem had not gone away.
"It is still going on," he told The Race in Bahrain. "I think Ferrari and McLaren are doing the mini-DRS stuff still."
The FIA clearly felt that there were enough grounds to take a closer look and, for the Australian GP, it increased its monitoring of rear wings through the use of extra onboard high-definition cameras. As well as that, it conducted extra load tests in the garages on unspecified cars to check on things further.
The FIA's scrutineering documents reveal that there seemed to be an extra focus on wings and bodywork over the Melbourne weekend.
After qualifying, Max Verstappen's Red Bull, George Russell's Mercedes and Carlos Sainz's Williams were all subject to aerodynamic and bodywork checks - which included front and rear wing regulation compliance.
Following the race, Lando Norris's winning car was also subject to four specific rear wing load deflection tests.
Jon and Edd Straw gave their immediate reactions to F1's flexi wing rule change in a special video for The Race Members' Club on Patreon, and will be answering members' questions in a Q&A video before the Chinese GP - join now to get 90% off your first month while the offer lasts!
The FIA noted these to be "a vertical and angled rear wing mainplane deflection test" and "a rear wing mainplane tip deflection test and a rear beam wing deflection test".
While the cars involved all passed these checks the FIA's decision to change the checks for China clearly shows that what it observed on track (where cars cannot be checked) was not satisfactory.
In the TD34 technical directive that relates to bodywork flexibility, which is regularly updated, the FIA is explicit that just because a wing passes the load tests in the garage does not necessarily mean it is complies fully with the rules.
It states that it will consider wings illegal if they have "designs whose structural characteristics are altered by secondary parameters, so as to produce [whilst running at the track] a different deflection characteristic than when stationary during the FIA checks. Examples of secondary parameters could be temperature, aerodynamic load etc".
The FIA's decision to act immediately, and with inference that there were "sufficient grounds" to do something after what it saw in Melbourne, shows that it was not comfortable with what teams were doing.
The new requirement that reduces the slot gap movement tolerance in its test from 2mm down to 0.75mm from this weekend's Chinese GP, and 0.5mm thereafter, will force teams to either strengthen their wings or use designs that do not exploit the 'mini DRS' phenomenon.
The performance impact
It is understood that the move to tweak the tests is not focused against a specific team, but is instead aimed at curbing what has become an increasingly common tactic up and down the field.
And while we can be sure that every team will claim that the changes will not have any material impact on their performance this weekend, it would equally be foolish to suggest that teams were messing around with flexible rear wings without seeking to gain from it.
A well-performing mini-DRS is not just about reducing drag on the straight to boost top speed for pure laptime. It can have knock-on benefits in allowing a team to run more downforce at the rear, which can help with cornering speeds and also tyre management.
And at a time when nailing the perfect car balance seems critical - just look at how important looking after tyres was in Melbourne's final sector last weekend - small changes here have large consequences.
Any impact is certainly not going to be massive though, and it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that a more rigid rear wing is going to turn championship leader McLaren from the dominant force it was in Australia to being dumped in the middle of the pack for China. The MCL39's brilliance is not just down to its rear wing.
However, in a season where details are going to matter a lot, and the difference between cars will likely be hundredths of a second at times, even marginal swings in performance can impact results - and that can change the outcome of pole positions, victories and ultimately even the world championship.
Measuring the impact is something that will also perhaps ebb and flow depending on different track layouts, and how they interact with the strengths and weaknesses of each car.
Red Bull will certainly be intrigued to see if there is any notable change in pecking order this weekend, just as it is waiting to see how the changes coming for Spain could shake things up yet again.
But the team will at least feel satisfied that a door that had been open for rivals to play around and gain an advantage from has now been shut.
Speaking in Bahrain testing, Wache made no bones about his view that the FIA has been too lenient on flexi wings - and that even the front wing changes that are coming for Spain should have been in for the start of the season.
It is something his team wanted but others successfully pushed back against to delay for a while.
"I personally think that the flexi wing is not part of the regulation," said Wache in reference to the FIA's reaction to the front wing flexi antics last year. "What I'm very surprised about is how the system allows you to do it.
"Normally when they [the FIA] see it, they clamp down very quickly. And it was not the case quickly. Now, on the front [wing] in particular, it will be a reduction after race nine, not at the beginning of the season - which I am quite surprised about.
"For me personally, and in terms of principle, it would have been a lot better if it was at the beginning of the season."
Red Bull did not get the flexi front wing antics stopped as early as it wanted, but it will have no complaints that any rear wing tricks have now been closed off at race two.
