The FIA has recently confirmed it is taking action based on safety reasons following the request made by a few F1 drivers from different teams, who pointed out they were suffering from back pain and raised concerns regarding the potential long-term effects of driving in such conditions. Scuderia Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz was one of them.
Despite the fact that this situation was mainly related to the porpoising problem, it also relates to the new ground-effect cars being run so low and stiff they have poor ride quality. With this in mind, the FIA feels refers to the matter as aerodynamic oscillations (porpoising) and grounding (cars repeatedly hitting into the track surface).
To try and bring some changes, the FIA wants to introduce a limit for the vertical oscillations drivers can be subjected to during the race weekend at each circuit. A complicated metric has been created to evaluate, measure and police this but at the same time the FIA has been focusing on “central floor flexibility, skid deflection, and skid wear measurement” – as the teams were informed in a recent, updated technical directive.
The FIA explains these are “inherently related to the same issue, and go hand-in-hand with the metric”, because in order for that metric to be equally relevant amongst all the cars the stiffness of the floor has to be equal as well. Technically, any change of the rules and regulation which is done during the championship needs a super-majority of eight teams to vote for it. Yet the FIA can force through changes if they relate to safety issues.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding how the flexi-floor changes could affect Scuderia Ferrari (and also Red Bull), but FIA accredited F1 journalist Giuliano Duchessa confirmed that he spoke with people at Scuderia Ferrari yesterday about the flexi-floor technical directive that will come in force in Paul Ricard and Ferrari informed him that they are not concerned over it.
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The news comes after Autosport also reported that “while much of the focus on the flexi-floor has revolved around Ferrari and Red Bull, both teams insist that they are not going to have to make any changes to their cars as a result of the new flexibility restrictions”.
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