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The timing was almost theatrical. On the same Friday that the FIA formally locked Ferrari‘s exhaust wing concept out of the 2027 technical regulations, Ferrari’s test driver Dino Beganovic was out at the Red Bull Ring running Charles Leclerc‘s SF-26 without the device fitted. Whether that was deliberate scheduling or a coincidence, the result is the same: a single practice session that managed to preview both the past and the future of one of 2026’s most consequential technical stories.
Ferrari’s device, known internally as the Flick Tail Mode or FTM, was one of the more sophisticated pieces of engineering baked into the SF-26’s original design.

The team apparently found a loophole in the 2026 regulations allowing aerodynamic devices within 60mm of the rear axle – a constraint that normally wouldn’t let anything extend past the exhaust exit – by relocating the differential as far rearward as possible and using the space beneath the deformable crash structure.
That repositioning made room for a small winglet sitting above the tailpipe, fed by exhaust gases to generate rear downforce, extend the diffuser’s effective length, and clean up airflow through the lower section of the rear wing.
The FTM is estimated to be worth at least half a second per lap, even accounting for the seven to thirteen horsepower lost by partially restricting the exhaust exit.
Rival teams couldn’t simply copy Ferrari’s solution. Doing so would have required rehomologating major structural components – but they did find their own path in.

McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams, Alpine, and Cadillac all integrated wing concepts by exploiting Article C3.9.2 of the technical regulations, which permits a single exhaust tailpipe “support” without explicitly defining how aerodynamically significant that support can be.
Less potent than Ferrari’s fully integrated version, but enough to indicate where the development war was heading.
The FIA was satisfied that every exhaust wing design on the grid complied with the existing rules, but it recognized the risk of leaving the area untouched – that it would evolve into another expensive arms race. Following discussions with technical directors across the teams, the decision to legislate the zone out of existence for 2027 was reached by consensus.

The ban was ratified by the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council in Macau on Friday, with the updated 2027 technical regulations published shortly after.
The mechanism is straightforward: new exhaust exclusion zone outlaws any part of the car within a circular cylinder shape that is 20mm greater than the tailpipe, covering the area around the exhaust.
The provision that previously allowed tailpipe supports to be fitted has also been stripped from the 2027 rules entirely. There’s no loophole left to exploit, because the language that made the loophole possible is gone.
Back in Austria, what Beganovic was actually doing had nothing to do with 2027 preparation. The purpose of the evaluation program was to better understand how the system performs at high-speed circuits, where the additional downforce the FTM generates may not always offset the drag it introduces.

Removing the device not only reduces drag but would theoretically relieve the back pressure the wing creates in the exhaust. Depending on what that data shows, the wingless configuration could be deployed at lower-downforce venues later in the year, Monza being the obvious candidate.
Ferrari invented something genuinely clever, got a full season of competitive advantage out of it, and now watches the FIA write it out of existence before anyone else gets close to matching the original. Ferrari has already begun working on compensatory solutions for its 2027 challenger, though the institutional knowledge gained from pioneering the concept and refining it across a season remains a competitive asset the regulations can’t take away.
The FIA closed the door, but Ferrari already got through it.
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