With more and more mostly reliable sites now relaying a similar story the chances it's still fake are lower, though I doubt the entirety of the drop in form is due to this reason only. Also, Nugnes (take this and the quote below with a grain of salt) says there will be a new front wing for Singapore.
For any long time Fernando fan, FIA screwing him is nothing new so it doesn't surprise me if true.The FIA did not have the means to declare mobile wings illegal, because they complied with the rules in static checks. The federal technical commissioners, then, clung to a possible violation of article 3.2. 2 of the F1 Technical Regulations which reads: “All the aerodynamic or bodywork components which influence the aerodynamic performance of the car must be rigidly fixed and immovable with respect to their reference framework defined in article 3.3. Furthermore, these components must have a uniform, solid, hard, continuous, impermeable surface under all circumstances".
Through this paragraph of the regulation, the FIA began to move and in the line-up the team that paid the most for the federal intervention was Aston Martin which saw part of the work done in the wind tunnel "thrown away" in the first six months when they could benefit from more hours in the wind tunnel having finished the 2022 season far behind in the team rankings.
Therefore, the slowdown in the development of the AMR23 after it was "recommended" to change the design of the mobile flap supports should not come as a surprise. In particular, there are those who believe that the bracket indicated by the blue arrow near the nose was also designed to reproduce a vortex similar to the Y250 that was well known on single-seaters until 2021. It could be...
The Aston Martin aerodynamicists are working to propose a solution that respects the new constraints, but restores the competitiveness that seemed lost to the "verdona"...