Brawn defends the Mobile Wing concept

The Mercedes GP team principal and leader of the FOTA technical group expressed his opinion favorably on the mobile wing concept that the teams would like to introduce in 2011 to improve overtaking on the track.

Brawn believes a lot in the potential of the solution and is sure that it will be able to deliver results in terms of increasing overtaking and making races spectacular. Ross wanted to explain the engineering concept behind the wing and dispel doubts about the danger of the device in the event of failure.

“The winger will be safe, he will just need careful thought in terms of the sporting regulations to prevent overtaking from becoming too easy. Some teams have carried out CFD simulations and tested situations in which the wing could fail. No problem, the flap is designed to return to its place in the event of a malfunction and continue to give maximum incidence."

The former Ferrari wall man also went into detail about the mechanism: “The front part of the flap lifts and not, as had been hypothesized, the rear part goes down. So the reference plane of the flap becomes the horizontal one and, if there is a failure, the wing drops back to its original position, returning to give the maximum load".

The teams will meet soon to establish the rules to apply to this device, there is the possibility of obtaining a movement of around 10 mm in the rear flap, but in case of need it could even reach 50 mm. The objective is to guarantee the following car a speed surplus of no less than 10 km/h.

“We have set a variation of the wing that seems adequate for the purpose, in fact perhaps a little more than necessary, but in this way we will have the possibility to reduce and go back if the effect becomes too strong. Now we must carefully define the methods of use of the device: the idea is to make its use possible based on detachment".

Robert Ferrari