Red Bull's front-wing cables
During Friday's sodden opening practice session for the Turkish Grand Prix, Sebastien Vettel contrived to run wide exiting the notorious, quadruple-apex Turn 8. Catching the astroturf outside the kerb, the Red Bull slewed sideways, and span into the armco barrier on the inside of the track. Easily done.
However, as the Red Bull was returned to the pits on the back of a lorry, the viewing audience was presented with a fresh view of some cables projecting from the broken front-wing supports of the car. Similar cables were exposed to public view after Vettel collided with Jenson Button in last year's Belgian Grand Prix. On that occasion, it was subsequently suggested that they were for the nose-mounted camera, and/or the motor controlling the front-wing flap adjuster.
Well, the front-flap adjuster has been eliminated from the regulations this year. Which leaves the possibility that they are simply camera cables. But then the camera positions are mounted at the tip of the nose, above the front-wing supports. Why would there be camera cables projecting from the bottom of the supports?
There's been a lingering suggestion that Red Bull's ability to retain front-wing flexibility, whilst passing the FIA's deflection tests, is dependent upon the use of some sort of sprung device inside the wing; something perhaps which is tightened to pass the pit-lane test, and then subsequently loosened.
Martin Porter put it this way last year:
Imagine a steel cable that runs from the top of the nosecone to the wing tips which prevents them from moving (a little bit like the support cables found between the wings on a biplane). Now, if that hypothetical cable was loosened, the tips would be given the freedom to flex and would naturally fall closer to the ground. If such a concept could be implemented inside the wing, even using something as simple as a cable, it would enable [the] wing's elasticity to be switched on and off by the driver.
It may be that Red Bull are running some telemetry sensors on the front-wing, and these cables are simply fibre-optic lines to transmit data to a central transponder. It would, however, be nice to have a definitive answer to this question...
http://mccabism.blogspot.com/2011/05/red-bulls-front-wing-cables.html