So, it was little wonder that Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, whose team has been dominant in F1 2023 up until now, found himself having to repeatedly dismiss any suggestions that his squad’s struggles were related to new FIA stipulations over the wings.
Backing up his argument is the fact that, with a flexi wing estimated to be only worth about one-tenth of a second around Singapore, the scale of Red Bull’s pace drop pointed to other factors being at play as the RB19 proved itself difficult to get into the right set-up window around the Marina Bay circuit.
Plus, according to consensus in the paddock, the focus of the FIA push on flexi wings was not in fact Red Bull, as it was others who had been perhaps pushing the boundaries in this area far more. While it was easy to link a potential shuffling of the order in Singapore - some teams looked better than normal, others had drifted back - with the timing of the much-talked about flexi wing technical directive (TD), it was actually another FIA document that had gone under the radar in recent weeks which served to fuel bigger intrigue for engineers.
Plank games
At the same time the FIA issued its TD on flexi wings (TD18) in late August, Autosport has learned it had also sent out a revision to the famous TD39 that was introduced at the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix, which had originally been aimed at bringing an end to porpoising.
One of the factors to trigger car porpoising was suspected to be teams playing around with flexible floors, which is why from last year fresh stipulations came in about the stiffness of floors and the measurements of planks.
The wildest theories at the time pointed to teams running moveable skid block designs, that disappeared into the plank area so did not get worn when the car ran close to the ground and therefore did not wear down beyond the allowed tolerances.
This was possible to do because, at the time, only a small section of the skid block was measured to check on compliance post-race.
However, to stamp out the practice, the FIA declared that measurements would be taken around 75% of the skid block radius - effectively preventing small areas getting protected.
Source: Autosport