No, you can’t stop engineers from testing aero in their heads, but I would imagine teams are required to keep logs and documentation of development work/wind tunnel time/computer simulations for FIA to inspect at any time. It’s nothing new either, each team has a wind tunnel time and CFD allocation per season, and there’s no development allowed over the summer break. I suppose in the end you have to trust that FIA is enforcing these rules properly, but you can never know for sure.
Genuine question: how is this even policed? You can’t stop people from thinking about solutions already.
No, you can’t stop engineers from testing aero in their heads, but I would imagine teams are required to keep logs and documentation of development work/wind tunnel time/computer simulations for FIA to inspect at any time. It’s nothing new either, each team has a wind tunnel time and CFD allocation per season, and there’s no development allowed over the summer break. I suppose in the end you have to trust that FIA is enforcing these rules properly, but you can never know for sure.
Iirc Wind Tunnel time usually is monitored by having FIA personnel present at the wind tunnel. But I may be wrong on that