The FIA has confirmed a new technical directive which comes into force immediately for the Chinese Grand Prix regarding flexing wings.

And in the opinion of three-time F1 race winner turned pundit Johnny Herbert, this will hit McLaren after their winning start to the F1 2025 campaign.

F1 flexi-wing saga returns: McLaren to suffer?

While the FIA already introduced new, sterner deflection tests for the rear wings in Australia – with the plan being for those tests to cover front wings too as of Barcelona, to control the long-running drama of flexing wings – the governing body has taken action with a new TD for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.

TD055A will see the introduction of stricter static load test limits on the rear wings as of the Chinese GP, with multiple unnamed teams said to have been displaying clear visual excessive flexibility, though they still successfully passed the static load tests in place in Australia.

According to Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Waché, McLaren and Ferrari are “doing the mini-DRS stuff still“, yet the FIA issued a statement “to further confirm that during the Melbourne event all cars tested against the requirements of Article 3.15.17 and found to comply, therefore all cars raced in Melbourne were deemed to be legal”.

However, after McLaren proved the class of the field in qualifying at Albert Park, before Lando Norris held off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by less than a second in a wet Grand Prix, Herbert suggested that this further FIA flexi-wings clampdown could hit team papaya.

“McLaren had a lot of issues with the rear wing falling backwards,” Herbert began with CasinoAppsThatPayRealMoney.com.

“This is about the gap, which is the main plane, which is the big thick bit and then the DRS flap. It’s that gap that’s moving and basically they still have this epoxy tooling block that fits in. This is the standard thing with the FIA requirement that’s there. That’s where the 75kg is then tested.

“So it’s a very thin edge at the back of the back of the wing, which is called the trailing edge and it’s that is obviously flexing around. What that does is the DRS flap goes from three millimeters and then it opens up to about 50 millimeters or whatever. There’s a big gain.

“There’s a gain with this, but probably, it’s much, much smaller, but it’s still a gain and it’s a flex that I would presume everybody’s starting to work on, which goes back to what happened in Azerbaijan with McLaren last year.

“It’s popped its head before and this is a directive to stop that flex where there is a slight performance gain. It could be giving a kilometer gain, for example, and a kilometer is a kilometer, and if it’s in a racing situation it’s harder to pass something that’s going one kilometer faster than you are because it’s more efficient, it’s less drag that it’s creating.

“So it will go faster in a straight line than someone else would be able to potentially achieve, better than others, but there’s always going to be a team that all the other teams are going to be looking at, they’re always looking at each other and saying, well, they’ve got an advantage.

“If there is an advantage down the straight from this wing, they’re gaining that advantage and that’s what they will look into, and then they will have a word with the FIA, then the FIA will look into it, which is why the cameras were put on the cars in Australia. If they’ve deemed it to be an issue, they’ll tighten up that loophole, so to speak.

“Instead of having three millimeters literally saying you’ve got none. No flexibility to make that wing flex, which means they put a lot of energy in trying to gain from that three millimeters, and if you reduce it to zero then the lack of gain means it’s not worth doing it. They might gain half a millimeter or a millimeter but that doesn’t do anything. They’re just controlling it so much more.

“It did come up with McLaren last season so it has been something that has been looked at before but I think the FIA, with their checks they did in Australia, they’ve gone, ‘Okay, we’ve given you 20 millimeters, we’re now not going to give you anything.’

“Whenever you read the rules there’s never supposed to be any flexibility but you can’t make anything completely and utterly rigid. It’s impossible to do that. But what they can do is try and tighten up those little performance gains that are there.

More on the F1 flexi-wing saga

👉 Uncovered: How teams are exploiting the flexi-wing gap effect

👉 New FIA flexi-wing update as Japanese GP plan of action comes to light

“Does it make any difference to the show? Potentially it can because one team may be able to benefit more than another so the other teams will also try and close that loophole to stop that team from gaining an advantage with the car that is the one that is everyone is racing against and this time around it’s the McLaren.

“So it’s a typical situation. Other teams are trying to stop someone having an advantage over them, full stop. Is it the right thing? I don’t have a problem with it being tightened up.

“Are McLaren doing things that the other teams haven’t done at the moment or are they pushing the limits? No, this is just part of what Formula 1 is always about and they’ve done the better job.”

Read next – Explained: Why the FIA has introduced even more flexi-wing directives