Red Bull's Front Wing Copied After Force India's Concept?

Red Bull have introduced a number of aerodynamic parts and systems this season that were immediately copied by their rivals. Obviously, having the fastest car of the field often leads to that, so there's no news here. The news, however, comes from the fact that the Austrian team seems to have copied themselves a design from another team.

And we're not talking about the overly-discussed F-duct system, but about the brand new front wing that caused such a rift between teammates Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel last weekend. After Vettel damaged his in the practice session of the British Grand Prix, Webber was announced by Red Bull to hand his new wing to the German for the rest of the weekend. But enough with that story, as most of you are already familiar with how it developed over the course of the Silverstone event.

According to Italy's authoritative Autosprint magazine, it seems this particular new front wing – featuring an extra flick on the endplates and the camera mountings – is based on a concept developed by Force India Mercedes.

“After the distinctive raised nose profile and the blown diffuser, the wing represents a rare example of Red Bull reportedly copying a concept from a rival team,” noted the GMM news agency, citing the aforementioned source. While the extra flick was all Red Bull's idea, the design of the camera mountings seems to have belonged to Vijay Mallya's guys.

It seems that Force India's initial concept was to have the mandatory front camera pods mounted under the car's nose, between the wing supports, which was copied completely by Red Bull. While the Silverstone based team switched back to conventional front camera mountings (on either side of the nose) in Great Britain, Red Bull decided to implement the concept “for future developments.”

Actually, team boss Christian Horner insisted that the new wing doesn't improve the car's aerodynamics too much, but is does represent a new direction that could be followed for the future.