Homologation, Safety and the Regulatory Response
The earliest appendages were literal wings, exposed and sharply edged, and the objection was immediate and physical: bikes race in close proximity, riders fall, and a rigid protruding blade at chest height is a hazard to the rider next to it as much as to the rider on the machine. The response was to move away from separate bolted-on wings toward shapes integrated into the fairing, with edges and dimensions constrained by regulation, so the aerodynamic function survived while the exposed blade did not.
The second regulatory instrument was homologation. Rather than allowing continuous aerodynamic development through a season, the rules require a team to declare its bodywork and then keep it, with only a limited allowance to change it. That does two things at once. It caps a spending race that would otherwise reward whoever could iterate fastest in a wind tunnel, and it stops a rider from arriving at each circuit on a machine with materially different handling. It is a cost and stability measure more than a safety one, and it is the reason aerodynamic development in the class happens in discrete jumps rather than continuously.
