“Macarena” wing challenge: the Red Bull “trick” and the Ferrari choice

Imagination at work The Miami Grand Prix saw the official racing debut of Ferrari’s so-called “Macarena” wing, but also of the equivalent solution brought by Red Bull. The final concept is similar, with the movable rear wing flap which, when opening, instead of simply decreasing its angle of attack, rotates until it reaches an inverted position. This has a particularly positive effect on drag in the open position, thanks to the mechanism of the aerodynamic flows at the rear which tend, with the wing in that position, to stall, causing the car’s drag to collapse. If the issue of resistance to progress has always been crucial in Formula 1, from this year it is even more so, given that resistance does not only equate to a greater need for power from the engine but also to a greater quantity of energy spent on the electrical part, a key aspect of these single-seaters. The changes to some rules, with the text of the regulation focusing only on the initial and final positions of the mobile flaps, specifying very little on the transitional phases, have allowed the engineers to work imaginatively, with different solutions for opening the rear wing seen on the track, such as those of Audi and Alpine, but the lion’s share are obviously the two “rotating” wings brought by Ferrari and Red Bull, which deserve some more attention given that we have the engineers of two top teams discussing the same theme but with a certain freedom to express themselves. Simple static differences On the “static” part the differences are simple to identify and understand. The RedBull wing, once opened, generates a slot between the main-plane of the rear wing and the rotated flap, much larger than the Ferrari one. It is to be imagined that this produces an even more intense drag reduction effect than the Maranello version, but in this case no definitive conclusions can be drawn given that this data depends on the aerodynamic flows at the rear of the car and only the aerodynamic analyzes in the possession of the teams can certify the better effectiveness of one solution rather than the other. The Ferrari flap, for example, could work with flows that interact more with those of the main-plane and obtain a better stall, while the Red Bull flap could produce a greater amount of lift (and not downforce, being rotated, obviously) by unloading and causing the car’s diffuser to stall. These are all hypotheses that are currently impossible to verify. What is certain is that Ferrari has partially renounced the efficiency of a part of the side bulkheads to incorporate the rotation mechanism, however gaining in aerodynamic cleanliness on the profiles thanks to the absence of the central actuator, an exact opposite path followed by the men from Milton Keynes, with the large central actuator producing a greater disturbance on the flows, but which keeps the end-plate area cleaner. The transition, the real difference Perhaps the most important difficulty to manage with this type of wing, however, concerns the transitional phases. As regards the opening, the management is theoretically simpler, given that it occurs in the acceleration phase, with generally a straight phase ahead. In these terms, the Ferrari solution appears slightly better, given that the rotation of the wing exposes the lower side of the profile to the direction of advancement and therefore a slightly lower form of resistance, an aspect which is not insignificant considering the motoring difficulties of the red car. The closing phase is, however, more critical, given that it occurs under braking, with the driver about to tackle a curve. Each transitional phase requires a certain amount of time to run out and bring the flows “back to normal” around the car, which means that from when the wing starts to close to when the driver has the aerodynamic load available to tackle the curve there is inevitably an interval and it is therefore essential that this time is as short as possible and that, possibly, the aerodynamics contribute to slowing down the single-seater, just as, with previous generations of cars, braking was somehow “helped” by the closing of the DRS. In this phase there is a fundamental difference between the two solutions: the direction of rotation. The Ferrari wing, in fact, rotates, exposing the lower side to the direction of advancement, while the Red Bull wing makes the movement in the opposite direction, exposing the upper part and then moving into a closed position. And it is precisely here that the fundamental difference emerges: the Ferrari wing generates, as in opening, less resistance to advancement, and reaches the closed position by passing through negative attack angles. That Red Bull passes for an instant through a configuration that recalls the behavior of a small parachute (obviously simplifying a lot), with a movement similar to a spoon, and then positions itself with respect to the flow with very high positive angles of attack, which gradually reduce up to the closed operating position. Again greatly simplifying the concepts, this means that the flows on the Ferrari wing must wait to stabilize until the very last degrees of rotation of the flap, a problem that is not always easy to solve, which in China, for example, led Hamilton to spin in free practice while experimenting with this solution. On the Red Bull wing the flows stabilize initially with high angles of attack and then reach full speed with the closure completed, as if the car first passed through a position of maximum aerodynamic load which then gradually reduces up to the closed position. Graphic analysis To understand what we are talking about, we have created this graph (very simplified/approximate) which serves to explain what happens to the downforce coefficient with the variation of the angle of attack. You can see how Ferrari approaches the working point passing from the area of ​​negative angles and flow separation, while Red Bull passes through the stall and then has a very high load coefficient which is reduced as the wing returns to position. The Red Bull route is evidently longer than the Ferrari one, and if intuitively one might think that it is worse, the reality to consider is that the time spent in closing by the two profiles is the same (0.4 seconds per regulation) and that therefore the fundamental point is that the Ferrari solution arrives in the “useful” (green) zone only at the last moment, while the Red Bull one begins to work and generate aerodynamic load (even in excess) much earlier. It is quite intuitive to understand that the Red Bull solution should guarantee a more effective transition phase and therefore greater safety for the driver when entering the corner with regards to the re-establishment of the aerodynamic load. Potentially the solution seen on the RB22 could also allow the wing to be closed a few moments later than the Ferrari one. Regulatory cunning As regards the regulation, it is interesting to note that rule C3.11.6 establishes that the rear wing flap must have a lower angle of attack in the open position compared to the closed position, but does not establish anything with reference to the transitional phase. And right here, probably, lies part of the cunning of Red Bull who did not worry in the slightest about decreasing the angle of attack progressively until the wing overturns as Ferrari does, but rather increases it until the overturning given by the final position, formally remaining within the regulations although in the transitory phase it does the opposite of what the regulation itself would intuitively suggest. Conclusion: Red Bull more aggressive on the rules, Ferrari goes towards the SF26 Summing up, the Red Bull solution appears decidedly more aggressive from a regulatory point of view, given that it “goes around” the rule in a very clever way, as is tradition for the Milton Keynes engineers and at the same time gains an advantage in the critical braking area. On the other hand, Ferrari, the first to propose this solution on the track, is more aggressive from a technical point of view with the actuator hidden in the side bulkhead of the wing and above all it maximizes the opening phase, with a slightly lower resistance to advancement which in traction can help given the well-known cavalry problems of the single-seater. On the other hand, as explained, it has to give up something during braking. After months of talking only about energy and batteries, being able to work on a technical and aerodynamic comparison of this type is truly like breathing fresh air, and given the deluge of updates on the single-seaters that we will have this season it is absolutely likely that other similar topics of interest will soon emerge.

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-05-08 03:00:00