James Vowles offers early take on radical Ferrari rear wing design
The radical Ferrari rear wing was not a solution that was on the Williams radar
Williams team principal James Vowles confirmed that the unique Ferrari rear wing deployed in Bahrain was not a solution which had been on the Williams radar.
Vowles predicts that it will become clear “within 24 hours” how effective this innovation is, which will inform Williams on where its own development programme should go from there. Vowles called it an “interesting” solution from Ferrari.
Williams boss on Ferrari rear wing: ‘Pros and cons’
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With a radically different set of regulations in play, and the first race in Melbourne moving ever closer, unique details from team to team continue to catch the eye.
Ferrari continued that trend on Thursday of the second Bahrain test by unveiling a radical rear wing.
Rather than the traditional method of opening and closing for the rear wing slot – as seen previously with DRS and into F1 2026 with the active aerodynamics – Ferrari has rolled out a new rear wing which rotates the upper elements through a full inversion, effectively, like an upside down rear wing.
It is an innovation which, understandably, has created quite the buzz around the F1 paddock. It is also an innovation which Williams team principal James Vowles offered his reaction to.
He expects a pretty swift timeline in terms of when the efficiency of this Ferrari rear wing will become clear.
“Intelligent packaging inside the end plates,” Vowles told F1TV in Bahrain. “There are pros and cons to it, overall.
“It’s worth saying this, and this isn’t just Williams, I would say this is teams up and down the grid, whenever you see something interesting, either it goes into the bracket of, ‘We’ve all thought about it and here’s the results and why we didn’t do it’, or it goes into the bracket of ‘Did not think of that’.
“And near enough overnight, within 24 hours, I would expect results to effectively indicate to us whether it’s good or bad, so we can modify our direction of travel.
“The rear wing from Ferrari, it’s an interesting direction of travel, let’s put it that way.”
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Vowles was asked whether this was a solution which Williams had thought of too.
“That one, it hasn’t come across our radar,” he confirmed. “Not sure it’s good yet either, but we’ll find out.”
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