Red Bull's Helmut Marko pulls no punches as he sounds off against FIA's technical directive taking effect mid-season

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has criticized the FIA's technical directive that introduces stricter tests for flexi-wings mid-season. Since the early 2010s, flexi-wings as a concept has been an area exploited by engineers.

The load tests implemented by the FIA can measure the flexing of a wing to a certain extent beyond which it cannot be detected. This is precisely the area that gets targeted by the engineers. In mid-2024, teams like Mercedes and McLaren pioneered flexible front wings, which helped them make significant gains.

When teams like Red Bull pushed the FIA to intervene, the governing body allowed flexi-wings on the front wing but outlawed the concept used by the Woking-based squad in the rear wing.

For the 2025 F1 season, with the governing body allowing teams to use the flexi-wings for the front wings, many teams were expecting to introduce solutions enabling the same. FIA, however, has introduced a technical directive early in the year where stricter tests would be implemented from Barcelona onwards, and in essence, this would limit the flexibility allowance of front wings as well.

As a result, a lot of the teams who have spent plenty of time working on the concept would have to rush to make changes from Barcelona onwards. This was something that was put forward to Red Bull's Helmut Marko, who didn't hold back on his criticism of the FIA's decision. He told AMuS,

"Now, everyone except the smaller teams has built a wing that bends. It's insane that they can throw them away in the middle of the season. Either the new rule applies right from the start of the season or not at all. The FIA should have realized by now that rules must be written in such a way that there are no gray areas. A comprehensive check for bending is practically impossible."

He added,

"The teams have much more manpower than the FIA. Poor Nikola Tombazis (FIA Technical Director) is left standing alone against an army of engineers who are coming up with clever ideas. To protect ourselves from this, the rules need to be clearer. So that there is no room for interpretation in such a context. What cannot be verified cannot be allowed."

Helmut Marko on Red Bull's upgrades at the pre-season test

At the pre-season test, Red Bull was the only team to bring the upgrades. The team brought a new front wing and the underbody and was seen trying things out on the last day of the test.

When questioned about the upgrades, Marko revealed that while the front wing was a step forward, the underbody did not give the desired output. He said,

"The wing worked well, the underbody not. So, in the afternoon of the last day of testing, we started putting the old underbody back on the car in parts. And with this combination—new wing and old underbody—it went better."

Red Bull is heading into the 2025 F1 season having lost the constructors' championship in 2024 to McLaren and hence motivation will be high when it comes to getting back on top.