Ferrari turned heads on Thursday in Bahrain when it rolled out a brand-new rear‑wing concept. Lewis Hamilton trialled a spoiler flap that can rotate 180 degrees to allow more air through on the straights. That generates extra top speed on fast circuits without sacrificing downforce in the corners. Williams team principal James Vowles was impressed by the design, but cannot yet say whether other teams will copy the concept.
During an interview with F1TV, Vowles was asked about Ferrari’s radical rear wing. The Brit admitted that a spoiler able to rotate fully about its horizontal axis is a unique find, but stressed it remains unclear how large the performance gain actually is. “They’ve packaged the active aero smartly into the endplates,” Vowles explained, “although of course there are pros and cons to that.”
‘We hadn’t thought of that yet’
The Williams team principal then explained how he — and, with him, most F1 teams — view such innovations. “I’m probably speaking for every team on the grid when I say that solutions like this always fall into one of two categories: either we’ve all thought about them but didn’t apply them based on the data, or we simply didn’t come up with them. In both cases the results will quickly show whether it’s a good or bad concept. Usually we know within 24 hours whether we need to change course. Ferrari’s rear wing is, in any case, an interesting development; let’s leave it at that.”
Vowles was asked whether Williams had thought of this solution themselves. “That hadn’t occurred to us yet,” he admitted frankly. “We also don’t yet know for sure if it’s a good concept, but that will become clear soon enough.” Incidentally, Ferrari themselves also don’t appear fully convinced of the new design. Charles Leclerc took the final day of running and opted for a conventional rear wing. That didn’t make him any less competitive; the Monegasque logged an unusually high number of laps and left with the fastest time of the week, almost a second quicker than Lando Norris.
