THE IMPACT OF THE FIA’S PORPOISING CRACKDOWN

It’s been the major tech story of F1’s first season back running ground-effects cars. It comes with many names – bouncing, hopping, bottoming out – but most know it as porpoising.

It’s a rather all-encompassing term for the aerodynamic phenomenon that has long been encountered in many motorsport series. But with the teams’ windtunnel running capped at 50 metres per second to save costs, it simply didn’t appear in their simulations ahead of the pre-season testing.

Everyone knows about it now, with the

FIA spurred into action on fixing the problem after June’s Azerbaijan round. There, the long straights compressed suspensions at top speed, which left the drivers with even less support than usual as their cars struck the Baku streets, albeit to varying degrees across the field.

A political saga followed the FIA’S announcement at the Canadian GP that it would establish a metric to measure porpoising and force teams running outside the subsequently set limits to change the set-ups of their cars on safety grounds. But this took on a different dimension when investigations revealed that some teams had been deploying clever flexifloor tricks to avoid plank wear, effectively gaining performance while remaining technically legal. This will be effectively banned from the season-recommencing Belgian GP, where skid blocks will have to be stiffer and measured differently to ensure compliance.

This change could shake up the competitive order across the grid. Ferrari has confirmed that it will be altering its car around the changes, with Red Bull publicly resolute that it will not do the same. The true impact will finally be seen at Spa.

In Baku, only one team – Mercedes – was understood to have been running outside the tolerance of the FIA’S Aerodynamic Oscillation Metric (AOM). It has been the most vocal in calling for the FIA’S intervention given its severe porpoising problems, but may in fact be most impacted by the coming changes, a risk it says it’s running for the good of the championship.