"It is definitely not something we like to see"- F1 drivers 'just have to deal' with the porpoising issues, feels former Haas man
Former Haas F1 driver Romain Grosjean believes drivers struggling with porpoising issues just “have to deal with it”, despite it looking “nasty” from the outside.
Speaking to GPfans Netherlands ahead of the 2022 F1 British GP, the Frenchman said:
“It looks nasty, it looks bad; It is hard on the body. We have always been running the cars as low as we could and bottoming hard on the straight but not bouncing the way they do.”
“I think it is definitely not something we like to see but it is here, so you just have to deal with it.”
The 2022 F1 regulations have improved on-track racing by making it easier for cars to follow each other through high-speed corners. Some of the changes, however, particularly those governing suspension, have also made life difficult for some teams and drivers.
@F1_Jordan Check this out the porpoising, Jordan. Anyone calling Lewis Hamilton out for complaining or play acting don’t know anything. Had to do this for 2 hours. https://t.co/NknwhMnyxF
While teams were blindsided by the extent of porpoising's impact on their car’s performance, the issue could have been easily fixed if not for a ban on hydraulic suspensions. Along with the switch to ground-effect, this year’s cars also feature mechanical suspensions, which are harder to control.
This meant that many teams were unable to control porpoising without having to sacrifice performance, either by raising the ride height or by adding additional weight to their floors to strengthen it.
Red Bull expresses concerns over FIA’s proposed solution to F1’s porpoising issue
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has expressed concerns over FIA’s proposed solution to F1’s porpoising issues, believing that it gives the governing body “more and more say” on how individual teams set up their cars. Speaking to the Motorsport Network, he said:
“When you look at it from a purist point of view, it’s not ideal, because it seems that we’re giving more and more influence to the FIA to dictate what your set-up is.”
“At what point do they say you have to run this rear wing, or a certain ride height? It’s a dangerous avenue to go down.”
The metric used to evaluate porpoising… here it is!
-The accelerometer is mounted close to the Centre of Mass
-It’s vertical reading (gVertSDRExtCoG) is used to calculate the metric (AOM)
The metric describes the oscillation energy per unit of distance driven!
#F1 #BritishGP https://t.co/zJiyFel6ot
Furthermore, Horner believes that the proposed solution, which involves the FIA setting a limit on how low teams can set their cars’ ride heights at each venue, is complicated and could end up hurting some teams’ performances over others.