No way to do this. See 1981. They’ll just tell the teams lift your car or live with the problem. Or fix your aero design.
Yep. And IMO they should do it very publicly. Any team that claims they can't do it for whatever reason, can only conclude they have made serious errors in designing their car, and will simply have to introduce a new chassis or, drive to a speed that they don't get porpoising. It was the same for Honda when they blew an engine every weekend.
Best explanation I read so far ! Is it correct that the design of the venturi tunnels cannot be validated in the wind tunnel because the ground is static? Therefore it would be a trial an error to fix the porpoising?
Not implying a mid season change also because the problem odd easily solved by raising the car or developing is design. All the under body aero is defined by legality areas and are referenced to the “reference plane”, aka, the bottom of the chassis. So just like the floor edges are today limited to no lower than the reference plane, so too can this be limited to no lower than “xx” mm above the reference plane. Of concrete course DF we’ll be reduced but so will the bouncing. And of course not this year but maybe next year. Or never if Red Bull makes its case for “we don’t have a problem.”
They can get aero loads for all the different “static” settings, right down to the floor touching the ground but these are just that, static. They can feed the static test point data into a dynamic model as well as the “derivates”—the rate of change of loads per deflection—and try to predict (analytically) the car’s response. What they can’t do in the wind tunnel is replicate the whole car with a representative (properly scaled) weight and suspension system. For starters, and according to Newey, the model needs to be 1/10 the current weight.
Merc’s Vowles actually breaks down the difference between porpoising and bouncing (literally bottoming) but ultimately, all the issues are related to the aero—running the car lower for performance but then having to adapt (soften?) the suspension to make that work and manage porpoising: “Vowles said the bouncing is simply a function of the car striking the track: ‘What is happening now is that the car is lower, as a result of fixing the first issue, but now hitting the deck quite hard, and that’s creating the bouncing that you see at the moment.’” https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/mercedes-explains-porpoising-and-bouncing-are-different-problems-with-f1-car/10322620/
Depends what you categorize as quick. I'd be surprised if a ride height adjustment takes more than 10 minutes. A lifetime during a race, a brief inconvenience during practice.
Still being a layman, I presume that simply raising the ride height is only a palliative and not a cure for the ailment. It would mean solving the pain, but no tackling the disease itself; like just taking a painkiller for comfort. From what I heard and read, the bottom of the problem are the venturi tunnels where Mercedes engineers have probably been too greedy in their search for maximum down force, and those cannot be corrected quickly: they need a complete redesign. Redesigning the underfloor cannot be done in mid-season, and Mercedes may have to live with porpoising and bottoming until the end of the year, I believe. After years of admiring their technical superiority, I have to admit that Mercedes messed up badly this time.
And that's exactly what the word compromise means. Ferrari could have a 1200hp engine but if it blows up after half a lap, perhaps the solution is to turn it down until they improve enough. Compromise. Any team can make a car that would be a beast in qualifying by using insane suspension and aero setups but they don't as it would be totally useless in the race, eating their tyres in a handful of laps. Compromise. What Mercedes and some other teams are doing is running their car as low as possible to get some performance out of it, but then complain about porpoising. They refuse to compromise. They refuse to accept they build a car that's ****. It really is as simple as that. What it looks like to me right now is that Red Bull has the fastest car, and they don't porpoise. The car is fairly high of the ground. They can run it lower, gain performance, but will porpoise. Ferrari is running their car lower and are porpoising, this is their compromise as without it, they'll be off the pace. Ferrari would otherwise finish 2nd. It's the same for Mercedes, except they would probably finish 7-10th or so. Mercedes probably build a car that's 5th best but they compromised their drivers health for better results. The FIA isn't responsible for stupidity.
It's obvious that Red Bull has the best car this season. Their reliability problems were minor and soon solved My money is on Vestappen 1st, and Perez 2nd in the WDC.
Apparently Adrian Newey used the Strouhal formula to calculate porpoising. Seriously. Adrian Newey's brain needs to be preserved when he's gone. The scientific formulas this guy keeps dreaming of to find solutions to problems...
Will they host the first Formula 1-E series race. Amazed they want to be locked in that many years out. Its only 2022 and they are now locked until 2035 lol. WOW.
Lmao..... If RB can reduce its porpoising, why can't other teams. Bet crybaby merc and Lewy would be behind this as they suffered the most.
There's also talk of a 3 manufacturer joining for 2026 other than Porsche and Audi. Domenicali says we should here more after the summer break on who this 3rd manufacturer is.
