John N
The phrase “porpoising” is one you may have heard thrown about by Formula 1 commentators during the pre-season testing. You may also be wondering what all the fuss is about, and how such a small, seemingly innocuous change in downforce could cause havoc with the running of a Formula 1 car.
The term porpoising in layman’s terms is the appearance of the cars to ride up and down over the bumps on the track!. However, if you don’t quite understand porpoising yet, worry not because I’ll be explaining everything you need to know about the term.
Been a lot of talk from the teams and drivers about porpoising 🗣 And here it is in action 👇#F1 #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/aYO35Yy6XJ
— Motorsport.com (@Motorsport) February 24, 2022
Technically, proposing is the violent bouncing on the suspension at high speeds, because the speed increases during braking and acceleration. The cause of this phenomenon is an aerodynamic one, where either the leading edge of the floor or the front wing is pushed towards the ground during braking as the downforce acting upon it increases. As the downforce increases, so does the speed, and as the speed increases, so does the downforce. The air rushing ever faster through the shrinking gap results in a strong ground effect that causes bouncing at high speeds.
The car’s ground effect works by increasing the pressure underneath the car, and decreasing it above – to increase the downforce. But this is a very sensitive system, and if you do take more load off, the pressure difference between top and bottom surfaces changes so much that it causes a stall. This stalls the entire system, and suddenly releases much of the downforce – but now, instead of applying loads to the tires from underneath, you release loads from above as well. So you have suddenly released most of your downforce, and the front of the car rises Your ground effect has been lost for a moment – but not for long! Because just when it is released, then it is working again! And the whole system is repeated cyclically until it’s time to brake for the corner.
Without the same level of downforce, the cars are less stable at high speed and require stiffer suspensions and stiffer tires. eams had been unable to simulate the effects of these changes. In a wind tunnel, even the stiffest belt of the rolling road is more flexible than the track surface, so it’s hard to simulate how springs and dampers will respond when subjected to these conditions during testing.
The teams are back to square one, like the early ground effect pioneers of the late 1970s/early 1980s. They have to work out a way to make the underside of the car less critical – either by changing the shape of the surfaces or adjusting the suspension. They could benefit from the ban on hydraulic suspensions, which would allow them to make adaptive suspensions.
Like it or not, the F1 teams will have to find a solution for porpoising in 2022. Using the tunnels presents an opportunity for them to build a car that is more downforce dependent and should lead to more overtaking in the races. However, designing a car around putting just the right amount of air into the tunnels is a nightmare. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that future cars are likely going to look different from those of today. If past regulatory changes are anything to go by, we should enjoy the next few seasons before everything changes.
