The biggest tech intrigue at the start of the Formula 1 season has revolved around flexi wings, concerning both a looming clampdown on movement at the front and controversy over mini-DRS designs at the rear.
It is all a world away from how things ended last season, when the FIA seemed to have drawn a line under the topic after teams pushed the boundaries throughout 2024.
Changes to the regulations after McLaren's brilliant exploitation of the 'mini-DRS' concept were aimed at stamping out any more trickery in that respect.
At that time, the FIA's single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said in an interview with the Motorsport Network at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that he did not see any need to act on antics relating to flexi front wings.
"There was a lot of hoo-hah about it during the summer and early autumn," Tombazis said.
"We had made it quite clear to teams since 2022 at least, that we were not planning to introduce any further tests on the front wing, and we stuck to that."
So when in January it emerged that the FIA had changed its mind, and was introducing tougher tests for both the rear and front wings, it inevitably prompted a fair deal of intrigue about just what had triggered the U-turn.
Pressure from teams
Various theories flew around about the FIA's change of heart.
There were even conspiracy theories that McLaren had pulled off a genius move to lobby for an 11th-hour change to try to thwart Red Bull after its rival had spent the winter needing to develop its own flexi wing that it would then have to throw in the bin.
Speaking for the first time since the FIA got tough on flexi wings, Tombazis has finally shed light on what really triggered the rethink.
He explained how it actually came from his own concern about where things were potentially heading in 2025 without intervention, rather than any teams hammering him to slow down a rival.
Asked specifically about the change of stance since his Abu Dhabi interview, and the theories about it being the result of being lobbied into action by McLaren, Tombazis said: "No, it was an internal decision.
"I guess I said this [in the interview] a bit too quickly back then, and with the benefit of hindsight, I would have rather not said that.
"After the season, we analysed all the data we had gathered with the cameras and so on, and we felt that the trend was that these deflections would continue to increase a lot.
"We felt that we could end up in the middle of the season with fairly large deformations and again, a lot of complaints and pressures and so on.
"So we felt, rather than wait for the middle of the season and so on, let's try to act a bit more decisively early on. That's why we revised our view around December time."
The timing of the new tests
While teams knew about the planned flexi wing changes as early as December, what was not settled upon until January was the timeline.
And this matter was subject to a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between the teams. Initially it was coming for the Monaco GP in late May, but then it got shifted back one week to the Spanish GP.
While squads such as McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari that had exploited flexi wings the best obviously wanted the tougher tests to come into force as late as possible, other outfits such as Red Bull that had not been so aggressive on this front would have preferred it to be in place for the start of the 2025 season.
Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache confirmed this stance in the Bahrain test when he said he was "surprised" by the delay in response.
"Normally when they [the FIA] see it, they clamp down very quickly," he told The Race. "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."
Tombazis admitted that the choice of which race the new tests would come in for was always going to divide opinion, but said he ultimately had to settle on the one that was fairest to most teams.
"It is extremely difficult to cut the cake in a way that everyone gets exactly the same size," he said. "I certainly remember when my kids were young, to cut any cake to the right size was quite challenging, and it feels the same now.
"So there will always be complaints of who is on the one side or the other side of the equation. But we have the cost cap and front wings cost a lot of money.
"With some small teams involved, and with rule continuity and a lot of carryover, saying something in December for the start of the season, we felt was a bit too harsh. People would have had to throw away wings.
"So on the balance of things, we felt it was better to delay it a bit. But there's no perfect decision."
The mini-DRS move
While the focus on front wings has been parked at least until the Spanish GP, the opening salvos of the 2025 campaign have been dominated by mini-DRS chatter.
Suspicions of teams playing around with opening up the slot gap were first revealed by The Race at the pre-season test in Bahrain, and they triggered a response from the FIA to increase monitoring of rear wings for the Australian GP.
The video evidence the FIA gathered there, allied to load tests conducted in the pits, convinced the governing body to impose some tougher restrictions from the Chinese GP.
Reflecting on why the stance was so aggressive on this front, Tombazis said: "Obviously, there had been a lot of talk about it in the autumn, and a lot of entropy, with teams complaining about each other.
"That's why, at the end of last season, once we looked at the whole situation, we thought we'd take some measures for this year."
Tombazis said that changes to the rules and some revised tests planned over the winter were hoped to be enough, but it quickly became apparent in Bahrain that that was not the case.
"We thought what we had done for the mini-DRS characteristic was enough, but we were not completely confident," he said.
"That's why we asked to put cameras on the cars so that we could monitor the situation. It became obvious during the Bahrain test that it was not enough, and so we thought, rather than let it precipitate into a long game of press comments and photographs and complaints, we thought it would be best to take decisive action, which is what we did.
"We also felt that the type of modification teams needed to do to comply were relatively doable for those who were more exhibiting that phenomenon.
"We pondered whether it should be Japan or China. China, of course, had very long straights, and I don't think anyone would have been talking about anything else here if we hadn't done it. So that's why we thought it's best to get decisive."
A closed matter?
Of the four teams at the centre of the mini-DRS intrigue (McLaren, Ferrari, Haas and Alpine), it was only Alpine that publicly admitted that it had to make changes to its wing to comply with the tougher tests in China.
However, Tombazis revealed that, based on his learning from Australia, others had to make modifications too.
"Some teams were already OK with the new compliance tests in Australia, but I think four or five were not and had to take some action," he said.
Asked about McLaren in particular suggesting it complied with the new 0.75mm tolerance for the slot gap in Australia so did not have to change anything, Tombazis said: "I don't remember the exact number of McLaren, and I don't want to talk about teams, but I'm not sure if it was 0.75mm."
While Tombazis would not talk specifics about what teams were doing individually, he said that there was a direct link between the wings that were seen flexing on track and those whose slot gaps flexed the most in static tests.
"We saw quite a clear correlation between the deflection measured by the FIA test and what we saw with the cameras onboard," he said.
"So the teams that were exhibiting a large amount of that phenomenon, what we measured in Australia, passed the tests of Australia and so on, but they wouldn't have passed this test [in China] if they hadn't taken action."
While the new tests introduced in China appeared to dampen down mini-DRS chatter in the pitlane, Tombazis said the FIA will continue to monitor whether anything else needs looking at over the course of the campaign.
Asked if he was confident that the matter was now closed, he said: "Confident is probably quite a big word, but I am hopeful this will be enough for this time."
