Mercedes has revealed that it has been forced to upgrade Brackley’s design tools in an effort to fix a chronic porpoising problem that has affected its 2022 F1 car.
Mercedes worked tirelessly throughout the first half of the season to understand and solve the W13’s high-speed, high-frequency vertical movements.
Complicating issues posed by the car’s design and its ground effects weighed heavily on Mercedes F1’s results at the start of the 2022 season.
But early on, in an effort to rid the car of the porpoise conundrum, Mercedes F1 needed to improve its factory design tools (mainly its CFD system) to better model and understand the problem. I noticed that there is
“We’ve invested in the way we work, the way we evaluate the development of the car,” said Andrew Shovlin, director of trackside engineering at Mercedes F1.
“And that investment meant that the car we were racing on the track wouldn’t go as quickly as if it had been head-on in development.”
“But it was more about deciphering the code of what was going on in these cars aerodynamically.”
“And if we could understand that, it was like, ‘Suddenly the lights came back on again and we knew where we were going and what we wanted to chase for future performance’ in terms of development.”
Mercedes has spared no effort in trying to solve the W13’s embedded porpoise problem. Ultimately, after some trial and error on the track, and a return to the factory in Brackley to upgrade the design tools, the problem was greatly mitigated.
“The problem wasn’t our wind tunnel, but there was a mechanism at work that wasn’t captured either in the modeling or in the work. It was the porpassing mechanism,” explained Andrew Shovlin.
“So there were two things that had to be done. One was that we had to disconnect it from the car. At the time[the opening race of the 2022 season]it was quite a distraction. It was a pain, and we had to put the finite resources in the aero department’s cost cap into figuring it out.”
“It was very fantastic, relatively basic work, and it was just getting the work done.”
“Then you realize how you develop the tools you need to get back to where you were.
“It was about committing to making a complete set of parts and then bringing it into the car and being confident that it would work.”
Initially, Mercedes thought the problem had been fixed for the Spanish Grand Prix, where it introduced floor and front wing updates, but the change opened the door to an unforeseen issue related to the stiffness of Mercedes’ W13. He was
Ultimately, however, steady progress continued over the summer, with George Russell scoring a commanding victory at the Formula 1 Brazilian Grand Prix, saving the team from a humiliating winless campaign.
