British Formula One managing director, motor sports and technical director Ross Brawn admitted to being a ‘little surprised’ that the teams have not anticipated the porpoising issues given the fact that they go hand-in-hand with the ground effect aerodynamics concept introduced this year.
During the first pre-season testing session this year, which took place in Barcelona, a lot of drivers pointed out this problem as 2022 challengers bounced up and down on the straights at the Circuit de Catalunya. It is a phenomenon known as porpoising, a direct result of the introduction of ground effect aerodynamics: basically the car is pushed down onto the track by the downforce and, as it gets closer to the ground, this causes the underfloor aero to stall. As a result, the car rises off from the track, which leads to the underfloor aero kicking in, and again the car is pushed into the ground. The process continues in an up and down motion which leads to lap time loss and also is uncomfortable for drivers.
A few teams looked to be more affected by this interesting and aggressive phenomenon in Formula 1, while McLaren seems to have already identified a “slot trick” solution for the issue.
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Ross Brawn thought the Formula 1 teams would anticipate this situation and would take important steps to fix it during their development process in their wind tunnels.
“We have all experienced it. It is prevalent, it’s a phenomenon, it’s physics,” – Formula 1 managing director Ross Brawn explained for F1TV when asked about porpoising that the teams have been suffering, adding that it happens a lot in single-seaters which have a “large dependency on ground effect. I’m a little surprised some of them have been caught out by it. I thought they would have anticipated it from their wind tunnel work, but you can see on the track that some people have already come to terms with it, so there are solutions out there. I think where they will face a challenge is that I suspect the solutions may be cutting back on performance a little bit, and the strongest performance may put them on the edge [of porpoising] – but that is a decision for the teams to make on how they set the car up.” – he continued.
At the same time, he admitted that if this become a safety concern for the drivers, the FIA will step in: “There are lots of Formulae now which have to balance that difference and if it ever becomes a problem, I’m sure the FIA can find some tweaks to the underside to reduce the sensitivity.” – he concluded.
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