Formula 1 drivers got an unpleasant surprise at the Barcelona pre-season tests when the old ghosts of porpoising , derived from the return of ground effect, reappeared.
As explained in depth last week, porpoising occurs when cars bottom out on the straights, which severely disrupts the process of generating downforce through the ground. The result is a series of huge rolls as the car drops down until it hits the track and then rises again.
That motion isn’t just a mere annoyance to the drivers, but, as George Russell put it, it can be “a real safety issue if it gets out of control” during the race.
And while some teams have suffered from this problem more than others, all are looking for solutions to first mitigate the effect and then eliminate it.
Although there are almost two weeks between the Barcelona and Bahrain tests, it takes a longer period of time to make big changes to the cars, so the porpoising is likely to be there for at least the first two races of the course.
A quick fix to keep porpoising to a minimum is to simply raise the ride height of the cars and thus prevent them from constantly bottoming out on the straights.
But the new generation of 2022 cars have been designed to rely heavily on ground effect, meaning they need to ride as stiff and close to the ground as possible to seal the ground and produce as much downforce as possible.
Therefore, raising the ride height too high could result in several tenths of a lap time loss, meaning teams will need to decide whether to lose performance or risk much more serious porpoising. Because although it was almost manageable in the test circumstances at the Circuit de Barcelona-Cataluyna, it could be more dangerous on other high-speed, bumpy tracks.
The dilemma of choosing between performance and driving comfort is especially complicated in qualifying, as teams found that the use of DRS mitigated the problem. That’s because activating DRS reduces the car’s downforce, so it doesn’t go as low against the ground as when that device is closed.
On a fast lap in qualifying, the DRS is deployed in all permitted zones, while in the race it can obviously only be used when less than a second from the car in front.
So there could be a temptation to go for a setup that is quick in qualifying with the DRS open, but more problematic on Sunday when porpoising cannot be alleviated by opening the DRS over and over again.
As the parc fermé rule prevents set-up changes to the cars between qualifying and the race, teams will be faced with difficult decisions.
“We will have to understand the cars well, but there are a lot of compromises to be made in qualifying,” said Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez.
“Everyone is looking to go as low as possible, but there’s also the porpoising. That’s going to be important because in qualifying, to get the most out of it, you have to go there [close to the ground]. But when you don’t have the DRS open, we have that problem. “.
Carlos Sainz, whose Ferrari was one of the cars that suffered the most from poising, added: “It depends on the set-up you have, it depends on whether you use DRS or not.
“It’s a whole new world and understanding that we need to be aware of, because it looks like it could be a big theme this year.”
Alpine sporting director Alain Permane acknowledged that teams are unlikely to go against their nature to seek speed and sacrifice performance to solve the problem.
While there appears to be a simple fix on the table, he’s “not convinced” teams will simply increase ride height until a permanent fix is found.
“It’s certainly a real problem, but I think we have to get over it, and I think everyone will get over it, I’m sure,” Permane analyzed.
“But I’m not convinced when you say we can stop that by going half a second slower. I don’t think anyone will raise their hand and say, ‘We’ll do that, we’ll make the aero changes to stop it from moving, which is going to cost us a lot of downforce. ‘ No one is going to do that, I think it caught everyone by surprise.”
The focus will now turn to how much the teams have ironed out the problem in their factories ahead of next week’s final test at Shakir, and whether or not the headaches will really increase for the first race of the season, the Bahrain GP at March 20.
