F1 CTO shares controversial opinion: FIA’s rule on porpoising is all about Lewis Hamilton
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The Formula 1 2022 season has been over for quite some time now, but the drama that it had brought with it, is still lingering in places. When the teams displayed their cars for the first time at the very beginning of the year, and they kickstarted the race in Bahrain, it was clear that the FIA have made introduced some changes in the rules, because of which there was a massive upheaval in the entire sport. As per the statements by the authoritative body that makes the rules for F1, they wanted to make sure the competition was closer and no single team enjoyed a big advantage over its rivals.
While all was going well with the new rules that got introduced in Formula 1 in 2022, there was one problem that plagued some specific teams to another level–and that is, porpoising. When Mercedes started their season, both their drivers complained of feeling some physical distress due to the constant up-and-down, jerky movements of their W-13s. By the time the F1 circus reached Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the porpoising problem had reached the limit for Mercedes racer Lewis Hamilton. At the end of the race, he came out holding his lower back, complaining against there being no action taken to curb porpoising.
While almost all the teams had found their answers to how they needed to evade the porpoising issues, Mercedes came up with nothing. And that is why their racers complained the most against this problem, urging the FIA to look for solutions to it. And finally, the rule-makers came out with a directive that said the porpoising will be reduced “on safety grounds”, much to the woe of Mercedes’ rival teams who felt the FIA should not have intervened in this. Now, F1’s Chief Technical Officer Pat Symonds has given his take on whether he thinks the FIA were justified in how they handled the issue of porpoising.
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F1 CTO Pat Symonds feels the FIA “overreacted a bit” with regards to the pospoising situation involving Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton is a massive figure in Formula 1, but his luck did not shine in 2022 as he failed to bring in even one Grand Prix win throughout the season. And this was a great opportunity for his rival Max Verstappen to snatch the Championship win. But when Lewis complained against the porpoising issue, the FIA instantly issued a directive stating that the porpoising will be reduced for safety reasons. This was not well received by the rival teams. And F1 CTO Pat Symonds also feels there was no need for the directive. He said, “Without a doubt, bouncing changed things. The teams first had to solve this problem before they could work on their aerodynamics.”
And then Symonds continued, “I think they [the FIA] overreacted a bit after Baku. In Baku we saw the worst impact because a team tried something that didn’t work and then went public quite loudly. If you hadn’t intervened, the problem would have been solved.”
Thus, after all that went down in 2022, porpoising still remains one of the biggest controversies of the recently-ended season. As the teams are awaiting the start of the upcoming 2023 Championship, it now remains to be seen if some new rules bring about more challenges for the teams and their drivers, and how they manage to overcome all obstacles to reach for the win in the end.
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Riddhi Mondal
(1821 Articles Published)