If there's one thing Formula 1 engineers love more than coffee, it's finding a tiny gray area in the rulebook and driving a championship-contending race car straight through it. But as Milton Keynes just learned, the fun doesn't last forever.
According to a scoop from Rosario Giuliana at AutoRacer.it, the FIA has officially moved to shut down a clever aerodynamic trick Red Bull Racing introduced earlier this season - meaning the team will have to head back to the drawing board for 2027.
How Scarbs caught Red Bull's cable hack
To understand what the FIA is cracking down on, you have to look at the lower sidepod geometry. Generally speaking, aerodynamicists want knife-sharp edges on the sidepod bodywork to cut through the wake and direct airflow cleanly toward the floor. But because the FIA wants smooth curves rather than sharp blades, the technical regulations mandate a large minimum radius for those surfaces.
That’s where Red Bull's design team got cheeky. As well-known F1 technical analyst Craig Scarborough (@scarbstech) broke down on Instagram around the British Grand Prix, Red Bull exploited a tiny carve-out in the wording regarding a "floor body stay".
The team fitted a structural cable running down the lower ridge of the sidepod. Because the regulations permit bodywork sitting directly near that support stay to have a tiny 20mm radius, Red Bull was able to mould a significantly sharper, more aggressive undercut than rivals running standard bodywork.
The trick first showed up on the RB22 at the Austrian Grand Prix, and it worked well enough that Audi blatantly copied the solution in Baku a few rounds later. As one fan joked under Scarborough's post, "Fixed rulesets find work for clever minds!"
The 2027 ban
Unfortunately for Red Bull and their copycats, the FIA's technical delegates aren't letting it slide into next year.
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.
MONZA, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 04: Ayumu Iwasa of Japan driving the (36) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB22 Red Bull Ford Powertrains on track during practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Italy at Autodromo Nazionale Monza on September 04, 2026 in Monza, Italy. (Photo by Sam Bagnall/Sutton Images)
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
The 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's 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 - and we give Red Bull's aero department until pre-season testing to find their next party trick.