2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix - Baku, June 10 - 12

[napoleon1981]

What is there to look into for the FIA really? It’s a bit of a nonsense issue. If the porpoising is so bad for some teams, there is a way to solve it - raise the car until you find another solution. No one is obliged to help you.

Same for the teams complaining about having to miss some races or they will fail to adhere to the budget cap - stop development of the car is it’s required to save money.

Both of these things costs lap time, sure. But the playing field is the same for all, so deal with it.

The Fia should put a sensor in the car to measure popoising. Is it too violent, the car has to be raised. Individualized solution that keeps the driver safe and doesnt affect cars that were developed according to the rules and have no porpoising issue.

[Bill]

Mandating a ride height would be silly some teams would find a way to break regulation .it would just open a can of worms with all bickering

[Ryar]

What is there to look into for the FIA really? It’s a bit of a nonsense issue. If the porpoising is so bad for some teams, there is a way to solve it - raise the car until you find another solution. No one is obliged to help you.

Same for the teams complaining about having to miss some races or they will fail to adhere to the budget cap - stop development of the car is it’s required to save money.

Both of these things costs lap time, sure. But the playing field is the same for all, so deal with it.

The Fia should put a sensor in the car to measure popoising. Is it too violent, the car has to be raised. Individualized solution that keeps the driver safe and doesnt affect cars that were developed according to the rules and have no porpoising issue.

What FIA could do to ensure safety is to enforce a maximum porpoising limit, e.g. some maximum vertical acceleration. That -would- be the same for all teams, and ensure safety. It would mean that some teams may be forced to increase ride height and sacrifice performance. But that's a fair sacrifice to make to ensure safety.

This is a very good suggestion, rather than mandating ride height.

[DChemTech]

Mandating a ride height would be silly some teams would find a way to break regulation .it would just open a can of worms with all bickering

Not too afraid of that if the FIA gets their penalties in order. "teams may break it anyway" should never be an excuse to avoid regulation. What the FIA must ensure is that their rules are SMART (so specific (no grey areas) - measurable (with clear methodology) - achievable (is the rule physically realistic/enforcable) - relevant (obviously) and time-bound (can required changes be made in provided time period), and that there penalties are in order. No shady deals - if a team breaks a rule, penalize them (and the specific/measurable part is essential there).

In this particular case the biggest objection to a mandated ride height is that it hampers fair competition. It essentially forces the field to accomodate to the worst performer, thereby penalizing all those that did better (and resolved the excessive porpoising). And in this case not even because the worst performer is inherently compromised - after all, they have a solution available to their problem, which is to voluntarly increase their ride height until they manage to reduce the issue in other ways.

The problem is with the teams, not with the FIA. Hence, if porpoising is indeed a safety concern (which seems to be a fair assessment), the FIA should mandate a maximum limit of porpoising (specific and measurable), but leave the means of achieving that to the teams. The FIA should not mandate the means itself in terms of a fixed minimal ride height.

[TNTHead]

What is there to look into for the FIA really? It’s a bit of a nonsense issue. If the porpoising is so bad for some teams, there is a way to solve it - raise the car until you find another solution. No one is obliged to help you.

Same for the teams complaining about having to miss some races or they will fail to adhere to the budget cap - stop development of the car is it’s required to save money.

Both of these things costs lap time, sure. But the playing field is the same for all, so deal with it.

The Fia should put a sensor in the car to measure popoising. Is it too violent, the car has to be raised. Individualized solution that keeps the driver safe and doesnt affect cars that were developed according to the rules and have no porpoising issue.

What FIA could do to ensure safety is to enforce a maximum porpoising limit, e.g. some maximum vertical acceleration. That -would- be the same for all teams, and ensure safety. It would mean that some teams may be forced to increase ride height and sacrifice performance. But that's a fair sacrifice to make to ensure safety.

This is a very good suggestion, rather than mandating ride height.

I agree, in my field of work we are measuring and assessing whole body vibrations, which are regulated by (EU) labor laws. Since a driver is in working conditions I even would assume some limits already are in place. For instance in standard ISO 2631-1 you'll find a methodology for wheighted accelerations to limit the impact on whole body vibrations.

[basti313]

The Fia should put a sensor in the car to measure popoising. Is it too violent, the car has to be raised. Individualized solution that keeps the driver safe and doesnt affect cars that were developed according to the rules and have no porpoising issue.

What FIA could do to ensure safety is to enforce a maximum porpoising limit, e.g. some maximum vertical acceleration. That -would- be the same for all teams, and ensure safety. It would mean that some teams may be forced to increase ride height and sacrifice performance. But that's a fair sacrifice to make to ensure safety.

This is a very good suggestion, rather than mandating ride height.

I agree, in my field of work we are measuring and assessing whole body vibrations, which are regulated by (EU) labor laws. Since a driver is in working conditions I even would assume some limits already are in place. For instance in standard ISO 2631-1 you'll find a methodology for wheighted accelerations to limit the impact on whole body vibrations.

Well, I guess this is not achievable nor relevant in a race car. According to labor laws no one can sit his employees in a prototype race car.

But I think the route is still correct. Mandate a maximum g-force that can be reached more than one time on a straight on the normal racing line. The g sensor is already in the car. Like this one avoids the issue of adding new sensors and one limits the rule to the relevant part. The car can bottom out on a single bump, but not multiple times or it can bottom when overtaking, this needs to be relaxed accordingly.

[MattWellsyWells]

Didn't the FIA say before the season they might amend the regulations if they felt things didn't align with the spirit of the rules or if they thought it could make the racing closer? Maybe they will do something about porpoising based on that? Hopefully it will be improved anyway in the coming races just because of smoother track surfaces.

[Fulcrum]

The GOAT doesn't deserve these sorts of cars at this point in his career. The young upstart is hungry enough to push trhough, but why would you want to put an elder statesman through that?

That is such a stupid take.

Seriously. Why would you want to put 37 year old through repeated spine jarring situations?

When I was George's age out in the field I would do all sorts of dangerous things, and I didn't protest because I was excited about the work and i was hungry to show what I could do.

With much more experience and knowing there is a safer way, better way to do things, I refuse, I speak out and do everything in my power to make changes.

The cars don't need to drive like this to make them "easier to overtake, " because that was the objective of this rule change right? Well it's not working much, and it's only hurting the drivers' health.

The only component of Hamilton's health taking a beating is his mental health, now that he doesn't have a car capable of lapping the entire field bar Red Bull and Ferrari.

If Mercedes have an unsafe car, they shouldn't endanger their star driver by running marginal set-ups.

Mercedes can run less optimal set-ups with respect to outright performance that would alleviate the issue, but it would make them slower.

Alternatively, they could solve their own problem, which I'm sure they are capable of doing, just not instantly.

Alternatively, if the rest of the field agree with Hamilton and Mercedes' position, then changes may happen. But you're about as likely to generate common ground between Israel and Palestine, so I'm not holding my breathe.

That leaves autocratic rule changes handed down by the sporting body, which will appear highly favourable to Mercedes should they be enacted.

There are no guarantees the changes would produce better racing, or less field spread, so doing so mid-season can only be interpreted as highly controversial.

[TimW]

Mandating a ride height would be silly some teams would find a way to break regulation .it would just open a can of worms with all bickering

Not too afraid of that if the FIA gets their penalties in order. "teams may break it anyway" should never be an excuse to avoid regulation. What the FIA must ensure is that their rules are SMART (so specific (no grey areas) - measurable (with clear methodology) - achievable (is the rule physically realistic/enforcable) - relevant (obviously) and time-bound (can required changes be made in provided time period), and that there penalties are in order. No shady deals - if a team breaks a rule, penalize them (and the specific/measurable part is essential there).

In this particular case the biggest objection to a mandated ride height is that it hampers fair competition. It essentially forces the field to accomodate to the worst performer, thereby penalizing all those that did better (and resolved the excessive porpoising). And in this case not even because the worst performer is inherently compromised - after all, they have a solution available to their problem, which is to voluntarly increase their ride height until they manage to reduce the issue in other ways.

The problem is with the teams, not with the FIA. Hence, if porpoising is indeed a safety concern (which seems to be a fair assessment), the FIA should mandate a maximum limit of porpoising (specific and measurable), but leave the means of achieving that to the teams. The FIA should not mandate the means itself in terms of a fixed minimal ride height.

Another issue is that it may turn the worst performer into the best performer. Say team A went too extreme with their floor, theoretically providing a ton of downforce, but giving excessive porpoising. Team B went less extreme with their floor, to avoid porpoising, and found the optimum amount of downforce you could get without porpoising. If you now raise ride height, team A may still have a decent amount of downforce, but team B has far less. So suddenly team A is much faster that team B.
And team B cannot even catch up because of the cost cap. All their development budget spent on developing a non-porpoising floor is wasted...

[basti313]

Alternatively, if the rest of the field agree with Hamilton and Mercedes' position, then changes may happen. But you're about as likely to generate common ground between Israel and Palestine, so I'm not holding my breathe.

Well, the whole gang of Merc powered teams and future Merc drivers is on the topic. I fear the noise will be high enough to not leave any space for the FIA but to apply changes. Toto at his best

That leaves autocratic rule changes handed down by the sporting body, which will appear highly favourable to Mercedes should they be enacted.

Depends. I am still convinced that the rear squat suspension is the core of the issue and Toto basically confirmed this in the interviews this weekend when he admitted that at high speed the suspension is zero and they only have the tire oscillating left.
So this can even turn against them if FIA mandates a minimum suspension travel at top speed, which would screw the concept with the open rear wheels that Merc has.

If they just raise the cars, I fear this can go anywhere as it hurts the ones relying on the ground effect most. But it would tremendously help Merc with the open floor concept. At the front I think it would screw RedBull but not Ferrari, so this change would be most controversial.

There are no guarantees the changes would produce better racing, or less field spread, so doing so mid-season can only be interpreted as highly controversial.

Absolutely. They could stop the front runners by going against the front runners...by for example forbidding the springs in the keel. But this is nothing they can do mid season. Anything they can apply now is for security, and this would directly need to go into limiting porpoising...whatever that means.

[Juzh]

Perez' said his tires were done after the range IIRC.
Also, team orders? not really. Just a request not to fight - which seems sensible considering the situation (Leclerc closing in, early in the race, Max having better tires). This was not similar to the 'let Max pass' in Spain, where they were actually potentially fighting for the win.

Perez lost 4 seconds in one lap under the VSC, because his tyres weren't in good condition? And then a further 2 seconds the next lap.

Really?

Interesting that Leclerc wasn't hauling him at 6-8 seconds a lap once the VSC lifted then.

The tire part is on why Max was allowed to overtake after the VSC - not just clear from Perez' comments, also clear from the fact that Max easily drove away from Perez after overtaking, while Perez was losing time on Leclerc quite rapidly. I don't know why Perez lost time under the VSC and if that was even permanent - can just be due to trying to stick to the delta. There is no reason to jump to conclusions and assume it was team orders.

As usual verstappen pre-empted VSC ending in a perfect way, so he was already on full throttle for a second or two before it was actually over, that's why gap to perez went from 4.2s down to 2s in just a single straight. Perez was probably sitting very close to delta limit and only floored it once VSC was fully lifted.

[Sevach]

A nice thread on how the FIA and the teams are tackling porpoising.

[chrisc90]

https://f1i.com/news/444653-horner-susp ... ising.html

Interesting article from Horner. I think he has a very valid point.

[F1NAC]

Not a fan of RB. Not even in the dreams, but I'm with him on that. Yes porpoising looks bad on some of the cars, but hey... You can always raise your car and lose performance. But nobody wants that. Why punish teams that manage to get it under control. I hope we won't get some silly changes during ongoing season. Mercedes is cleary pushing their drivers to speak more on porpoising that it looks bad. Come on guys..

[Schuttelberg]

Mercedes have finally accepted that they cannot fix the bouncing without losing performance so Russell, Hamilton and Wolff are going to go into a PR overdrive to make this out as a safety issue.

Sainz, Leclerc, Magnussen, Riccardo are also with the Merc PR team I belive
Maybe all of them are hoping to get a merc drive soon, or it must be a genuine issue

And they are also bouncing and suffering. You cans simply raise the ride height of the car at the cost of performance but these guys are lobbying for a mandated ride height so that the field is levelled. Why should the teams who have sorted the issue suffer? You can read or watch what Lando said.