One of the most debated issues of the 2022 Formula 1 championship was certainly the now infamous porpoising effect. An issue that was difficult to identify based on the data from the wind tunnel (in which the behavior of the car can be simulated up to a maximum of approximately 180 km/h), porpoising was first noticed during the Barcelona pre-season tests dating back to February 2022, during which almost all the teams found themselves having to deal with a physical phenomenon that was as bizarre as it was unexpected.
With the exception of Red Bull (Adrian Newey’s contribution certainly made the difference from this point of view), all the teams found themselves in the situation of having to understand how and why so much bouncing occurred on the car, obviously trying to solve the problem in the shortest possible time.
We have seen how the two cars which proved the best in the start of the 2022 Formula One season (Red Bull RB18 and Ferrari F1-75) differed greatly from each other due to a very different reaction to the bouncing effect, most likely due to a diametrically opposite aerodynamic approach. The large amount of downforce generated by the F1-75 and its car body, combined with the need to run as low to the ground as possible, meant that the single-seater designed by Enrico Cardile and his team of engineers was one of the cars most affected by porpoising on the grid. On the contrary, however, Red Bull was able to never suffer from the porpoising problem, consequently being able to concentrate solely and exclusively on reducing the weight of the car (a problem that gripped the Austrian team in the first few races).
However, managing to make up for the porpoising rather easily, Ferrari continued its season until July with a fast car, seen by many as the best car on the grid, only to then be deprived of this status starting from the Belgian Grand Prix. Indeed, it was precisely at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps that the famous Technical Directive 039 was introduced, through which the teams were forced to comply with a metric for the reduction of vertical oscillations.
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What changes from this year in Formula 1
From 2023, anti-porpoising rules will be further tightened, with the ground clearance of the cars increasing by another 15 mm.
“It will be interesting to see how porpoising improves with the regulation changes,” said Dave Robson, Williams engineer. “These are changes that should try to incentivize teams not to race with a car that is too low. I’m sure the porpoising will come back if someone pushes a little too hard, but we’ll know for sure in February.” – he pointed out.
The same idea was also expressed by Andrew Shovlin, chief engineer of Mercedes:
“There are still [porpoising] issues that occur with the cars in fast corners and the floor comes to a point where it touches the ground, which can cause a bit of instability. The rule changes will help, but they won’t completely fix the problem. They will manage to make things a little easier for the teams, but we are confident that the learning and understanding work we have done in early 2022 will help us to at least reach a good foundation.” – he explained.
The controversy and various considerations that followed after the officialization of the new anti-porpoising rules is destined to continue at least until the first pre-season testing session which takes place at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.
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