Red Bull finally rolled its rotating rear wing into a race weekend at the Miami International Autodrome. Red Bull says the wing has not been copied from or inspired by Ferrari, and that this was a concept the Milton Keynes team had been working on for much longer.

Whether you believe that or not, the more interesting question is the one nobody at the team has answered on the record: what does the RB22’s wing actually do differently from the Scuderia’s?

An interesting read comes from an aerodynamicist posting under the handle Dr. Obbs on X, breaking down the geometry of the two wings element by element.

Why Red Bull’s is Different

The rear wing is capable of a full 180-degree rotation to considerably reduce drag on long straights. The difference is in how each team has chosen to get there, and what they have given up to do it.

Ferrari’s solution is the more conservative one. The upper flap pivots from a hinge mounted in the endplates, which lets the team preserve the relationship between the flap and the mainplane that aerodynamicists actually care about: the overlap at the slot gap. Red Bull, by contrast, has kept a single central actuator and built the entire mechanism so the flap rotates rearwards underneath the main element.

From a side view, the flap appears to lift almost entirely clear of the endplates, remaining connected only by lateral supports, creating a more aggressive interpretation of the concept than Ferrari’s design.

Writing about the sacrifice Red Bull has accepted in order to package the rotation around a central actuator, the X user explains:

“I believe that one thing RBR is having to do with this design of their flip flop wing, Ferrari may not have to do, is sacrifice the overlap between the first and second elements of the rear wing. Because the RBR wing rotates backwards under the main element, the leading edge of second element must be stepped back from the trailing edge of the first element (bottom image).

“The older design has an overlap at the slot gap that creates a bit more efficient design that isn’t necessary with a conventional DRS actuator style design.

“Because the Ferrari wing rotates the other direction, the overlap can be maintained between first and second elements.

“So what does this mean? RBR may be sacrificing some rear wing corner load (efficiency) for better straight line performance with the much larger opening gap when in straight line mode. The reduced overlap (RBR design) may cause some loss of load performance at higher rear wing load angles, but the offset of better straight line performance may outweigh that.

“It appears that this is one of the aero performance tradeoffs in design philosophy that there is between the Ferrari and RBR flip flop wing designs.”

The RB22 has been a difficult car since lights out in Australia, and a wing that gives away a slice of cornering load to claw back top speed is a defensible call when you are starting Sundays out of the top six.

The Weight Question Nobody Mentioned

There is a second knock-on effect of the central-actuator route, and it is the kind of thing only an engineer would think to ask. In a follow-up exchange on the same thread, the so-called Dr. Obbs was asked whether the Red Bull wing might be lighter than Ferrari’s. His answer:

“I would assume so. One actuator mechanism vs. two in the end plate.”

The RB22 is still overweight, although insiders suggest significantly less so than during the first three race weekends of 2026; at the start of the season, the new car was around 12kg overweight, and this upgrade should roughly halve that fat on it.

A wing that achieves the rotating-flap concept with one actuator instead of two endplate-mounted units is contributing to that weight reduction. It also concentrates mass closer to the car’s centreline, which is generally what you want on a circuit with the kind of low-speed direction changes Miami serves up between Turns 11 and 16.

Early estimates suggest the upgrade could boost the car’s top speed by five to 10km per hour.

Whether that gain holds up across the rest of the calendar, on tracks where corner load matters more than straight-line speed, is the part Red Bull cannot answer in Florida. The Ferrari wing was always built to give up less in the corners. The Red Bull wing is built to give up less on the straight. Miami, with its long DRS zone down the back straight and its tight infield, is genuinely a coin-flip circuit for which idea wins.

Ferrari shows up to pre-season in Bahrain with a rotating rear wing that flips itself almost upside-down on the straights, the paddock christens it the Macarena, and a few months later Red Bull rolls into Miami with something that looks suspiciously similar bolted to the back of the RB22. Anyone watching would assume Milton Keynes spent the five-week April break on a photocopier.

Laurent Mekies would like a word about that. Speaking to Sky Sports F1 in Miami, the Red Bull team principal pushed back on the copycat talk.

“As much as you will not believe me anyway, but I have to say it in fairness to the guys, the guys came up with that concept far before we hit the track and we saw what everybody else had been doing,” he said.

“But, as we said, we had bigger issues to solve before to be able to bring that rear wing to the track. So, it’s a good indication of how hard everyone is pushing.”

According to reports, Red Bull had already been working on a comparable solution for months, with initial designs submitted to the FIA as early as last summer.

The team had submitted the first ideas to the FIA last year – just after Ferrari.

How Red Bull’s Wing Actually Differs From Ferrari’s

The two designs share an objective and almost nothing else.

Red Bull has kept its central vertical actuator as the main rotation mechanism, modifying only the attachment points between the flap and endplates, while Ferrari’s SF-26 uses twin actuators built into the endplates on either side of the wing.

It is also more aggressive than Ferrari’s. The rear wing opens much more than the Ferrari.

Sky’s Ted Kravitz, watching it deploy in Miami’s first practice session, said the following:

“Red Bull have ‘outmacarenad’ the Ferrari rear wing. The size of that actuator to make that rear wing flip up, it opens up a lot more than the Ferrari, I’m thoroughly thrilled by it.

“Red Bull are downplaying it but it’s great stuff, so let’s see if it will be reliable and it will be on the car for the rest of the weekend. It looks good so far.”