BARCELONA, Spain – One theme that emerged from the opening three days of F1’s pre-season testing was the unusual behavior of the 2022 cars when traveling at straight speeds on the pit road. When they reached top speed, almost all cars were detected bouncing up and down when they were suspended – a phenomenon known as porpoising.
The name describes a vehicle that simulates the movements of a dolphin as it moves through the water.
The jump is linked to F1’s rule changes for 2022, which give teams more freedom in generating downforce from the underside of the car through the use of ground effect aerodynamics . Basically, the length of the car is thought of as an upside-down airplane wing with the underlying surface shaped to create low air pressure under the car and suck it down the track.
The idea of using a car floor to generate a significant amount of downforce is nothing new. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, F1 teams began to better understand the potential of ground-effect aerodynamics, leading to a sudden increase in cornering performance but also problems. similar to the problems the teams experienced in this year’s test.
When the vehicle is fully loaded with a large amount of downforce, it will push its suspension down, running the risk of the floor squeezing or coming into contact with the rails, which could potentially stall the airflow. under. The sudden loss of downforce due to floor stalling results in the car being lifted above its suspension, thus allowing the floor to start working again and forcing the car to back down.
It could be triggered by a collision or the vehicle simply going over low-altitude, but once it starts happening, it results in eerie images of the vehicle bouncing up and down straight before the occupants. Drive the bike with the brake pedal, reducing the speed significantly allowing the airflow under the vehicle to re-attach and return to normal.
This can be avoided by running less extreme setups but teams naturally want to pursue lower ride heights as they should in theory generate more downforce. Teams are aware it could happen, but no one expected it to be as extreme or as frequent as it once was.
However, most technical directors believe it can be fixed with updates, even though those updates were not part of the original development plan. McLaren’s James Key doubts that races five or six will cease to be an issue once the teams have had time to work things out.
