what a race L clurk wins in Ferrari's home but our Focus obviously goes to the title fight and this weekend another twist appeared as Red Bull and most notably helmet Marco and ven are claiming that McLaren is driving an illegal car could there be any truth to this and where are these claims coming from is the flexible front Wing the secret to McLaren's success Red Bull adviser helmet Marco wants the FIA to look at this feature on the MCL 38 as well as the Mercedes front Wings the Austrian made these words during Red Bull's dismal qualifying practice in Monza Mercedes unveiled the so-called flexi Wing in 2022 but the flexible front Wing appears to be most effective this year the German outfit has already won three races in the 2024 season McLaren is also using this flexi wing on the MCL 38 and is quite pleased with the results indeed the British team is closing in on world champion Red Bull in the constructor's title with the difference now down to eight points and only 62 points left between vasten and Norris while the concerns for Red Bull revolve around the effect of enhancements introduced this season not matching what its opponents have discovered team boss Christian Herer has provided an intriguing hint as to where he believes the discrepancy lies Christian Herer Red Bull's team boss has previously revealed that his team's competitors had seen more benefits from a different front wi idea I think the front wi is an important area where others have found performance herner said the way the front wings are used is very different if you look at the angle of the front wings of McLaren and Mercedes they are very different very different from the rest of the group adviser helmet Marco also observed the differences in the front Wings the Austrian wants a probe into them the front wings of McLaren and Mercedes IES should be examined the Austrian said it is still uncertain if the FIA would heed Marco's demand in any case Max vapen and Sergio Perez will have to deal with the so-called illegal McLaren and Mercedes cars so what's so different about it when it comes to architecture both Mercedes and McLaren do things that Red Bull does not the most prominent example is a trend started by Mercedes in 2022 that had to be changed to reflect changes in legislation for 2023 this is is the lower rear corner end plate cutout and semi- detached flap layout which has been copied by several other teams notably McLaren the goal is to regulate the air flow that spills around that part which then influences the Wake formed by the tire behind it is not the only design feature that distinguishes Mercedes and mcclaren's front wings from Red Bulls as the two also address the separation between the static inboard area of the wing and the adjustable flaps differently on the MCL 38 and w15 the brake between it and the adjacent movable flap piece is more diagonally biased as a result the two metal separators at the ends of each segment generate a Vortex this will be adjusted to enhance flow Downstream to the floor and the side pod undercut and as shown in the nose mounted camera film The adjustable flap part backs off as speed increases assisting with the difficulty of combating lowspeed under steer and highspeed over steer this movement or flexible Wing if you prefer clearly modifies the shape Direction and strength of any Vortex that is being formed which may be modified to boost performance even more if a team has sufficient control over how those pieces Flex flexy Wings have recently been a hot issue with the FIA being able to require that teams use additional cameras during free practice sessions to further study the phenomena it's a well-known fact that teams exploit Aero elasticity to boost performance with various methods yielding different outcomes this is not a new thing since teams May draw from a big backlog of designs and data to get the desired results and McLaren continued to put pressure on its Formula 1 competitors unveiling a slew of modifications at the Italian Grand Prix while some of these tweaks are track specific for monza's high-speed characteristics others indicate long-term efforts to squeeze out even more performance from the MCL 38 the most visible improvements for Monza are always to reduce drag with the front rear and beam Wings among the smallest seen on the vehicles all year in mcclaren's instance this begins with a revised top flap design for the front Wing which has a cresant shaped piece shaved off the trailing Edge at Monza the team also makes more adjustments to the MCL 38 side pod and engine cover Bodywork in order to enhance airflow p message to the rear of the vehicle because of this more delicate structure McLaren chose teardrop shaped flap pivots over Barrel style ones used in Belgium as predicted Mclaren has combined this low downforce offering with a single element beam Wing to increase top speed performance but the most important upgrades came to their front Wing once again and when vapen was asked to explain Red Bull's down turn in form last weekend he argued that it was simply a matter of his team's opponents making bigger improvements with a different front Wing idea the one thing Red Bull is lacking or doing things the legal way according to them very different to the rest of the group but ven revealed more problems after the F1 race in Italy I thought we got the most out of the car in terms of position but not in the way we approached the race ven said the pace was not strong enough so we had to drive our own race and had a bad Pit Stop ven reveals that he and teammate Sergio Perez had a problem during the race which prevented the Red Bulls from running at full power moreover he judges that in hindsight his F1 team strategy was not the best I think we did not optimize our strategy some cars did a one stop and we did a two stop and that was not the best choice most of the race we couldn't drive at full power because of a problem so that doesn't help all in all a bad race theen continued it would still have been a bad race with full engine power but maybe we would have been more competitive we were driving in no man's land if we don't change anything about the car it will be bad from now until the end of the season we have a lot of work to do afterwards bapen was Unapologetic about his own race it was just another dramatic race nothing was running the car was not running at all I didn't like the strategy at all and the pit stop was absolutely crap and we had to drive with less power so basically everything went wrong said a disgruntled Dutchman foren was also unhappy about the strategy where we drove didn't matter anyway but you still try to drive your best race but with our two Stoppers that was definitely not the case on both hard and medium tires we were too slow the way things are going we are not going to win any more races but it is what it is while he currently leads the driver's championship by 62 points that Advantage might be gone soon if things continue like this especially with that attitude vapen was hopelessly off the pace by his high standards finishing qualifying 710 behind Pole Position after struggling with his not drivable rb20 around the Monza track and in the race he looked lost in six Place only overtaking George Russell because he made mistakes he doesn't anticipate things to get much better in the upcoming races either if you already have balance problems over one lap they are not suddenly solved in the race he said it can go downhill fast if it continues like this but that is what I have always said it raises the question has Red Bull listen to the three-time world champion worryingly the stappen claims they have but don't really know what to do to fix the car's problems they certainly listen to me but it is very difficult to find a solution he explained I think they are listening but they don't really know what to do yet that's the problem however Redbull is trying hard to find a solution we are checking things but that just takes longer verstappen added it is not like I thought one day after the summer break now everything is suddenly going well we need more time time to test and evaluate certain things unfortunately that takes a bit longer than we would like hopefully we can come up with something at some point that improves the balance at the same time the competition is not sitting still as for stappen admits during his news conference in Monza that it is alarm Phase 1 for Red Bull the question is will they be able to catch up and are they right here are Mercedes and McLaren running illegal front wings or is this just a tactic to take the heat off themselves what do you think let me know your thoughts in the comments down below