F1 teams will need to regain performance in their 2023 F1 cars by around half a second of lap times due to floor rule changes aimed at reducing porpassing.
Following the problem of excessive bouncing that many F1 teams faced last year, the FIA stepped in to stamp out the phenomenon.
As well as introducing short-term fixes using the Aerodynamic Oscillation Metric (AOM), F1’s governing body has also pushed for technical regulation changes for 2023.
One of the most important is the 15mm higher floor edge. This is intended to discourage teams wanting to run their cars close to the ground where porpassing problems occur.
The FIA’s single-seater technical director Nicholas Tombazis believes the fine-tuning of the rules has been essential, revealing the extent of the drop in performance F1 teams are expected to suffer.
“There is no doubt that we did the right thing,” Tombazis said of the decision to change the rules.
“We tried to find practical, short-term and medium-term solutions. Porpathing won’t go away completely, but it will be one step less.”
“Not that much,” said Nicholas Tombazis when asked how much downforce he expects F1 teams to lose.
“I think we lose about 15-20 points of downforce, which is about half a second.”
“But of course development will probably go beyond that.”
While many F1 teams have been completely caught up in the extent of the porpoise for their 2022 F1 cars, Nicolas Tombazis believes no one anticipated the scale of the problem.
“It surprised everyone a little bit,” said Nicholas Tombazis.
“There have been self-righteous comments from some people in our Hilltrik division, historical figures and others, but no one really predicted it accurately.”
“But once we had a pretty good understanding of how the problem could arise, we took some measures and the team learned a lot about it in the meantime. Overall, since Baku, For example, when you find out what happened, I think there was obviously a very big change.”
F1 teams and the FIA now have a better grasp of the problem of porpassing, but Nicolas Tombazis thinks it would be wrong to think that the problem will go away forever.
“I think the changes will essentially reduce it,” said Nicholas Tombazis.
“But we’ll have to see if we’re far enough from that edge or if we’re going to dip into it from time to time.”
Category: F1 / F1 machine