Is he perverse and unexpected result of changing the aerodynamics of Formula 1 in 2022: the teams work to eliminate the ‘porpoise effect’ which causes the cars bounce off straight lineswith the risk of breakage of parts and inconvenience for the pilots.
Surprising name, this phenomenon is called ‘porpoise’ to recall the shocks of cars to the way these cetaceans swim close to the dolphin.
In recent seasons, the single-seaters stayed glued to the ground thanks to the ailerons located on top of the body. This year the ground effect returns, which causes a suction sucking the chassis from the bottom.
But it has detected a problem during pre-season testing: when the cars sink too much, the airflows around the cars separate and the car rises, the ground effect appears again and so it is repeated until the pilot brakes.
In addition to speed, weather conditions, such as headwinds, also cause this phenomenon. Therefore, it can occur at any time during a Grand Prix.
You can imagine that the ‘porpoise effect’ has caused headaches for engineerssince there is “a risk to the reliability” of the single-seaters, says the German driver Mick Schumacher (Haas).
As well it’s hard to bear for the pilots, according to the Frenchman Esteban Ocon: “It is even violent. It is as if you hit your head on the ground; resonates throughout the car. By dint of repeating yourself, your head hurts”, for example, after a training session.
These rebounds also affect visionwhen “visibility is no longer too good with the big wheels”, another novelty in 2022.
“If the car jumps and you come to the brakes, you can find yourself with locked wheels,” adds the driver of the Alpine team.
“It will be part of the season,” says Schumacher. “For those who have not managed to reduce it or eliminate it completely, it is about learning to drive with it and minimizing it as much as possible (…) I think that at the beginning of the season we could see a few more retirements as a result of it,” he concludes. (D)
Source: Eluniverso
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