“Let’s fix it,” Mercedes receives much-needed help from the FIA

“Let’s fix it,” Mercedes receives much-needed help from the FIA

Mercedes W-13

Mercedes has had their bad days this season when they fought against a ground effect called porpoising. With the drivers complaining about back aches and dizzy minds, FIA looked into the situation and decided to bring a good share of regulations to stop the bouncing. James Key, the technical directive of McLaren, backed Mercedes in the fight against the health issue porpoising might bring into.

Porpoising is a floor effect triggered by downforce in cars. When the new 2022 regulated cars run on straights, the vehicles seem to have a bouncing effect on them. The bouncing seems to affect drivers’ health leading them to have treatments after the race. But if this continues, physios expect large-scale implications on their health.

Mercedes looks the most to be affected by the bouncing. James Key reviewed all the requests made by the silver arrows as a must. Taking the safety as the first priority, he adds to fix the problems as soon as possible.

“Let’s just go and fix it. On the basis that it does have risk, it doesn’t bring anything to the sport,” said James Key.

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Porpoising issue is much similar to the non-Halo days

Lewis Hamilton getting out of his Mercedes in pain
Lewis Hamilton getting out of his Mercedes in pain

Halo was introduced in Formula 1 back in 2018, which changed the whole identity of how the F1 cars would look in the future. With many drivers and teams slamming the looks of the car, Halo was brought into the sport for safety reasons. As time passed, we have already seen incidents that made the whole Formula 1 industry thank for the forceful regulations brought 4 years ago.

James Key talked about the similarity between porpoising and Halo, “You remember all the comments of ‘it looks terrible, it’s not Formula 1’. All this stuff,” the McLaren technical director recalls. “And now look at a few years later that we’ve had it, how thankful we are, where we’ve seen some of the things that are happening on the track,” He said

Though he also understands the difference in magnitude he hopes FIA to bring some regulatory action against the ground effect as well. Mercedes are one of the teams to brutally suffered from this effect both physically and on points. But this thought is being opposed by the teams with less porpoising to suffer.

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