Formula 1’s return in 2022 to a design based on the ground effect concept brought to the surface a phenomenon already known and long forgotten in Formula 1. It is the now known porpoising, triggered by the progressive lowering of the car body to the ground under the thrust of the aerodynamic load as speed increases. Below a height limit from the ground, the air flow enters a critical condition that causes a sudden loss of downforce, causing the car to stand up and regain load. The cycle thus has a new beginning, giving life to the repeated vertical oscillations visible from the outside.
The aerodynamic rebound has been at the center of the technical discussions since the beginning of the season, given the implications on the car’s balance of power.
Porpoising caught all teams off guard due to the difficulty in replicating the phenomenon in the wind tunnel and in a virtual environment. The teams have invested a lot of resources to stem the problem, given its complications that extend beyond mere concerns about vibration and reliability. The aerodynamic rebound is in fact associated with an inconsistent load level, which destabilizes the car and reduces the grip available on the tires when cornering and braking. Pending specific aerodynamic updates aimed at fixing the phenomenon, its prevention has been entrusted solely to the set-up choices and in particular to the mechanical ones. The increase in the height from the ground and the stiffening of the suspensions have proved to be useful tools to keep the bouncing beyond a certain limit, however suffering a considerable loss of load generated by the floor and therefore a loss in terms of performance.
Hence the need to find a solution to the problem, as the teams are not more willing to compromise the set-up and sacrifice the potential of their cars.
At the recent Spanish Grand Prix, several teams have introduced considerable packages of updates, many of which are aimed precisely at fighting porpoising to allow them to extract more performance from the cars.
Formula 1 technical experts Craig Scarborough and Sam Collins analyzed the teams’ progress in aerodynamic rebound control, using telemetry data collected from Formula 1 and discussing it in the Tech Talk broadcast, the Circus’s official program dedicated to technical analysis. From the analyzes conducted, great differences emerge between one race and another in the behavior of the same car, making it difficult to establish comparative references. The two drivers thus chose to compare the data relating to the pre-season tests in Barcelona and the Spanish Grand Prix which, despite being influenced by different set-ups between the two occasions, refer to the same track.
The first graph shown on Tech Talk quantifies porpoising through two parameters: the frequency, projected along the horizontal axis and expressed in Hertz (Hz), ie the number of oscillations per second; the amplitude of the oscillations, expressed in the form of vertical acceleration (g) and reported along the vertical axis. Throughout the entire graph it is possible to observe a common trend from the pre-season tests to the Spanish race, with the reduction in the amplitude of the oscillations accompanied by an increase in their frequency. This drift could indicate a progressive increase in the stiffness of the internal suspension elements as the teams’ understanding of the cars has progressed.
Another interesting information is the similar improvement for Ferrari (FER) and Red Bull (RBR) since the beginning of the championship, as underlined by the two almost parallel lines. However, the F1-75 is the car that started from more porposing at the beginning of the 2022 Formula One season, which is why, with the same progress, the fluctuations of the F1-75 still remain even greater than the direct competition. Mercedes (MER) and Williams (WIL) are the other teams capable of expressing a significant reduction in porpoising, at the price of a limited increase in oscillation frequencies compared to their rivals. Finally, it is important to note that Alfa Romeo (ALF) was the car with the best starting point as regards porpoising, while Haas (HAA) denotes an anomalous trend, with an increase in both the amplitude and the frequency of the oscillations compared to the beginning of the championship.
Focusing only on the extent of the rebounds measured in Barcelona, it is possible to see that Red Bull and Alfa Romeo are actually the best placed teams on the grid, a situation that has already been discussed in the paddock after the Miami race. Mercedes has recently been added to them, thus testifying to the effectiveness of the update package introduced in Barcelona, which had as its primary objective the containment of porpoising. The teams better positioned in the fight against the phenomenon also demonstrate the scarce influence of the suspension scheme on aerodynamic rebound. These are Red Bull, with front pull-rod and rear push-rod, Mercedes, with rear tie rod and front push-rod, and Alfa Romeo with double push-rod suspension.
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Among the top teams, the data shows that Ferrari is still the car that suffers most from porpoising, despite having made significant progress. On the other hand, the single-seater with the largest swings ever turns out to be Alpine, an apparently surprising situation considering how in Australia the A522 was actually among the best positioned cars.
Craig Scarborough and Sam Collins, however, showed further more in-depth analyzes, highlighting that for the same car there are great differences in the management of porpoising between one race and another. The data also show a progressive change in the amplitude of the oscillations during the same Grand Prix, as an effect of the progressive fuel consumption and lightening of the car, with different sensitivities depending on the team being analyzed. Finally, further differences in porpoising emerge when comparing the two cars of the same team, with a different intensity and frequency of the aerodynamic rebound depending on the set-up choices preferred by each driver.
Porpoising thus proves to be an extremely sensitive phenomenon to a multitude of external variables, making it difficult to draw a precise picture of the starting park based on the observations made only in the Barcelona race. The data available also lacks another fundamental information, namely the trigger speed of the rebound. In fact, with the same fluctuations, a car on which porpoising occurs starting from a speed higher than the competition will be in a better position, requiring fewer compromises on the set-up front.
Therefore, net of these unknowns, the data show that Mercedes and Red Bull are the teams that most of all have stopped the aerodynamic rebound. The Milton Keynes team in particular has made progress similar to those of Ferrari, which however, starting from a more critical situation, still shows discrete room for improvement ahead of it.
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