High wing mirrors explained - 12th August 21:37pm GMT

There has been some talk in the last couple of months with people trying to work out why Ferrari are running high wing mirrors or in some cases one high mirror and one low mirror.

Its very hard to see out the back of an F1 car and its claimed that the wing mirrors actually do very little so the rumours were that the high mirrors on the F2005 was so that Rubens and Michael could see through the rear wing. Although one shot I took at Silverstone (here) shows that one mirror was high and the other low.

However its now been revealed what they do and its purely to see the wear on the rear tyre throughout the race. Depending on the track and what side the wear is coming from, they will adjust the mirrors accordingly. So in Hungary the wear was on the right hand side and so he ran a high mirror on his right. They also move the mirror from the cockpit onto the side of the sidepod so he has a view of the tyre and not a face full of winglets.

For some unknown reason though Rubens does not run this configuration and still uses the old system of low mirrors.