Red Bull RB10 Renault

[gray41]

Anyone have a picture of this?

[mikeerfol]

So what exactly did they discover?

[ChrisM40]

So what exactly did they discover?

A deliberate and obvious mechanism that is designed to make the wing flex.. Building in flex by making the wing structure flexible is one thing, but actually having a device attached to the wing to make this happen is something else.

[ajprice]

So what exactly did they discover?

A deliberate and obvious mechanism that is designed to make the wing flex.. Building in flex by making the wing structure flexible is one thing, but actually having a device attached to the wing to make this happen is something else.

Yep. Laying the carbon fibre in the wings in a certain way for the stiffness to be directional and still pass the FIA test then flexing in use is one thing, they could argue its legal as it passes the test. Building a spring into the wing planes isn't something they can talk themselves out of, it's a mechanism built to purposely get around the wing flex rules. If it has got something like this, they could be in deep you know what.

[turbof1]

http://www.f1technical.net/news/19827

It emerged later from the paddock that the issue revolves around an illegal front flap adjuster. Journalist Adam Cooper was told the FIA discovered a leaf spring arrangement inside a rubber shroud.

So it isn't the carbon fibre layering (as mentioned here before), but a hidden spring in the flap adjuster. Are we suspecting that the intent is exploiting a loophole in the rules, or a deliberate act of doing something illegal?

[nacho]

Maybe the spring serves a real purpose on the flap adjuster but it's just optimized for flex?

[Phillyred]

http://www.f1technical.net/news/19827

It emerged later from the paddock that the issue revolves around an illegal front flap adjuster. Journalist Adam Cooper was told the FIA discovered a leaf spring arrangement inside a rubber shroud.

So it isn't the carbon fibre layering (as mentioned here before), but a hidden spring in the flap adjuster. Are we suspecting that the intent is exploiting a loophole in the rules, or a deliberate act of doing something illegal?

That IS the question.. However, I can't imagine a leaf spring being used for anything less than a surface or area that was meant to bend/flex/deflect etc under load and in this case aero load.

[SidSidney]

Wonder if the new McLaren wing has the same mechanism?

[djos]

So what exactly did they discover?

A deliberate and obvious mechanism that is designed to make the wing flex.. Building in flex by making the wing structure flexible is one thing, but actually having a device attached to the wing to make this happen is something else.

For all we know it could be part of the adjustment mechanism and only designed to tension the adjustment mechanism.

[Steven]

IF (and that's still not exactly confirmed) there is indeed some mechanical flexing built into the adjuster, that's quite a neat feature, and I would not be surprised if they are running this for quite a while. It's interesting here that the flap adjuster only acts on the upper flap of the front wing. And because that should be moveable, it's not attached to the front wing endplate.

Then, the FIA front wing flex test works by putting a mass on the endplate, slightly ahead of it's middle (in fact, 800mm ahead of the front wheel centreline, whereas the endplate is located from 450mm to 1000mm ahead of the front wheel centreline). This means that it does not test flexing of the flaps, and certainly not the adjustable ones, as they are, as mentioned, completely independent of the endplates.

[bill shoe]

Very interesting, yes. At least by removing the leaf spring element, RB will be able to field cars in the race tomorrow. If the issue was carbon flex then it wouldn't be clear how they'd fix it.

I will quietly and calmly vote that this smacks of simple cheating, not cleverness or loopholes. But discussion will continue.

I note that RB has bookended Riccardo's fantastic season with DQ's: Australia for intentional fuel consumption violation and Abu Dhabi for flap-gate.

[djos]

Regardless of flap-gate, how about Dan extracting 6/10ths more out of his rb10 than Seb, that was mega and he did it twice in q3 just when it looked like Seb was getting to grips with the car.

[thisisatest]

I case you didn't notice, there's a tweet tag when writing a message.

https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status ... 9318028290

apologies. Sent this from my phone. I tried using the TWEET feature but it didn't show correctly when I previewed it.

[SiLo]

Wonder if that's what they have been using all these years? I'd really like to know. How have we not seen it from crash pics?

[Crucial_Xtreme]

Some pictures from today of RB's illegal FW.








Edit: I'm not sure if this is the wing fitted with the illegal spring or not. Searching through other pictures to try to find a difference.