Formula 1 engineers will always find a tiny gray area in the rulebook and build a race car straight through it, but that fun eventually ends. According to Motorsport.com, the FIA has officially moved to shut down a clever aerodynamic trick introduced by Red Bull Racing earlier this season, forcing the team back to the drawing board for the 2027 season.
To see what the governing body is cracking down on, you have to examine the lower sidepod geometry. Aerodynamicists normally want knife-sharp edges on sidepod bodywork to cut through wake and direct airflow toward the floor. Because the regulations mandate a large minimum radius for those surfaces in favor of smooth curves, Red Bull's design team got cheeky. As technical analyst Craig Scarborough broke down on Instagram around the British Grand Prix, the team exploited a carve-out regarding a floor body stay.
Red Bull fitted a structural cable running down the lower ridge of the sidepod. Since the regulations permit bodywork sitting directly near that support stay to have a tiny 20mm radius, the team moulded a significantly sharper, more aggressive undercut than rivals running standard bodywork. This clever trick first showed up on the RB22 at the Austrian Grand Prix, working well enough that Audi blatantly copied the solution in Baku a few rounds later.
Unfortunately for Red Bull and their copycats, the technical delegates are stepping in. AutoRacer.it reports that the FIA is amending the 2027 technical regulations to limit the floor support dimension down to just 5mm. By slashing that tolerance, the rulemakers are completely closing the loophole that allowed Red Bull to tuck aggressive bodywork around the stay.
This change effectively bans the configuration, forcing both Red Bull and Audi to redesign the entire lower section of their sidepods for the 2027 season. It is a classic Formula 1 tale: a team finds a loophole, the paddock mimics it, and the FIA patches the glitch in the next update. Still, we have to respect the hustle from Milton Keynes.
