Why dont F1 cars have cockpit-adjustable wings so the driver can adjust the angle of attack?
They don’t have them because they have been illegal since 1969. (Although well into the mid-80s several teams pushed the limits of the law with front wings which the driver could change the pitch of in one direction as the fuel-load decreased…) When F1 “borrowed” the Chapparal “high-wing” concept, the wings were adjustable by means of rubber straps from the cockpit – there was a pedal which the drivers would push with their left foot when going down the straight in order to flatten the wing. Unfortunately in the interests of saving weight, these wings were not build sturdily enough to withstand a couple of hours of load and there were several accidents, finally and most dramatically at the 1969 Spanish GP, when the two Lotus drivers, Rindt and Hill, both crashed at the same point within a dozen laps of each other. When the FISA wrote the legislation banning the high wings, they defined them as “movable aerodynamic devices” and the wording of this rule has been used on several occasio
