Ferrari Wants Future Rear Wings to Bend

Ferrari has been on a roll with patents lately, and its latest shows just how extreme aerodynamic aids can get with a splash of Maranello creativity. The new patent, filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, was first discovered by CarBuzz, and it describes a rear wing that features a bendable material that can be manipulated by actuators to increase downforce or bleed off drag as necessary. And like the crazy multi-axis 'centripetal' wing Zenvo wowed the world with a few years ago on its TSR-S, it appears that downforce can be altered laterally, not just longitudinally.

Ferrari Wing Patent Has Multiple Pieces

Rather than a traditional single-piece wing, the one Ferrari proposes uses multiple separate airfoils attached to a flexible plate on each side, with actuators bending the plates and thus the airfoils as needed. These slats can form an upward curve under braking to increase drag, but with independent plates on either side, this curve need not be uniform. In theory, one side could curve more than the other on corner entry, increasing downforce on the inside rear wheel to maximize grip. On corner exit, the wing can progressively return to its original shape, providing balanced downforce (or reduced drag) on a straight.

Related: Is This the Ferrari 12Cilindri GTO?

Deformable aerodynamic devices are nothing new to Ferrari, which patented shapeshifting bodywork earlier in the year with the aim of enabling purer supercar forms that look beautiful when stationary and sprout more aggressive aero as necessary, but like that original patent, there's a glaring issue: how will Ferrari twist and deform bodywork over and over without compromising the paint finish of the car, not to mention the structural integrity of the moving elements? One theory is to use some sort of next-gen polymer, but we'll have to wait for Ferrari to put something like this into production before we know more, since the patent doesn't delve into that part of the invention.

Ferrari Looks to Otherworldly Innovations to Increase Performance

In a world where two- and three-thousand-horsepower hypercars exist, outright power is a high-stakes game to bet your reputation on, and it appears that Ferrari has decided instead to focus on finding ways of making such extreme power more exploitable with a number of clever innovations. Another patent in January of this year proposed active aero that predicts the road ahead, while a more recent patent put forward the idea of using suspension elements as aero devices, basically expanding on the teardrop-shaped wishbone idea of the Porsche 911 GT3 RS and 992.2 GT3. Will any of these inventions see the light of day? That depends on cost, complexity, and overall performance benefit, but given how many technologies Ferrari patents every year, one thing is for sure: Ferraris of the future will always be more capable than those available today.

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