Formula 1-2022 Season

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

alfadriver said:

So for Toto to highlight it as an issue along with Lewis- how can the two of them put together be "political"?  

The "politics" argument is that some people are advocating for a rule change to address the porpoising on the basis of driver safety, so perhaps Hamilton is faking to make that look more dramatic.

The counter-argument to the rule change idea is that Red Bull has managed to make the car work without doing it, so clearly it's possible, so why should they be penalized?  The other teams have the choice to raise the ride height and give up performance, after all.

The counter-counter argument is that the rules as they stand are forcing most of the teams to choose between driver safety and performance, and that is not how it's supposed to work.  The incentives are wrong.

 

Toto saying to Lewis, post race, "I'm sorry we are making you drive a E36 M3box."

Not too political, I think.  Just honest.

What are the rules about changing things?  Development has been heavily restricted by the rules makers, the budget cap means they can't just throw engineers at it, no testing,  and Merc has the least wind tunnel time because of winning constructors last year.  Are they allowed to replace a major section of the car if they decide its fundamentally flawed?

NY Nick said:

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

I see what you are saying but we just finished round 8 of 22. After round 4 of 22 people were already crowning Leclerc and Ferrari. I thought that was premature and I think it still is, there is still only a 51 point spread to the top 4, that is a couple of DNF's, a broken rear wing, a blown engine, a crash at Silverstone. Last year at this time everyone swore Max had it in the bag. Lewis came back to make it a toss up at the last race. Not trying to open that up just saying 14 is a lot of races to go.

Exactly. Waaay to early to say. Everybody wrote RB off after the slew of DNFs in the first few races and are writing Ferrari off prematurely for the same reasons now. With the car designs still so fresh there is plenty of time to find for both teams (and Merc for that matter if they don't paralyze Lewis first). Max, Charles, and Checo will all have more bad finishes before this season is through. Who knows, Sainz may even have a good one.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

I 100% believe that Lewis was in significant pain after that race. I also 100% believe that he made sure the whole world knew about it to try and get a regulation change that might help his team. This is F1, EVERYTHING is about getting an edge in any way you can.

I think this is closest to the truth.  I do believe that car is brutal to drive, and the drivers are suffering.  But they would be foolish if they don't try to play it as a driver safety issue to get the rules changed, which would let them make modifications to make it more competitive.  Everybody's jumping all over Horner for pointing this out but IMO he's just stating the obvious.

Ignoring the cost cap / budget issues, I've heard numerous times starting back in pre-season testing something to the effect of "we didn't know how bad it would be because we can't simulate it."  I was then and remain still baffled by this.  Having spent most of my career in aerospace building / leading high-fidelity sim development, that answer seems like a pile of E36M3 to me.  I can buy that it might be very difficult to trigger it in the wind tunnel due to various constraints, but in the computer sim?? My interpretation of that answer is "we don't know how to model it in our sim (yet)" but I guess no one wants to admit that.  

Kinda seems like RB has figured that part out - I have trouble believing they just showed up, ran a few laps, and said "hey, look, no porpoising! Hurray!"  

Formula 1 be like "We want close racing and we're going to do it with an aero package from the 80's that had this known problem and you're not allowed to test or run a lot of wind tunnel time and we're going to outlaw any old technology that will help cure it and any team who happens to get it right in the first race has a baked-in advantage for the rest of the season and, oh yeh, you can't spend your way out of the problem because of a budget cap-did we already say the part where we wanted closer racing?"

NorseDave said:

Kinda seems like RB has figured that part out - I have trouble believing they just showed up, ran a few laps, and said "hey, look, no porpoising! Hurray!"  

Maybe RBR just has better software. 

(Yes, I work for Siemens)

Aero 'roads' are considerably more smooth than actual roads.  I can see how something that works in the wind tunnel wouldn't work IRL.  Plus, changing from the 15" to 18" tires, with their shorter sidewall, has changed the relative spring rate at each corner.

In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :

So we can all hate on your for rouge cows success.  Got it traitor.  

The really frustrating thing about MB's situation is that it's so close to being competitive.  If they were DFL the answer would be easy, bin the concept and run the "show" car they brought to the first test.  But it's the best of the rest behind Ferrari and RB and the problem is they don't really understand how to make it work.   They are running two different setups with Hamilton basically running as a development driver with the new setups.  Once they figure it out it should run at or near the front of the pack, IF they figure it out this year.   

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

NorseDave said:

Kinda seems like RB has figured that part out - I have trouble believing they just showed up, ran a few laps, and said "hey, look, no porpoising! Hurray!"  

Maybe RBR just has better software. 

(Yes, I work for Siemens)

If all the teams are just using off-the-shelf packages for their computer sim/modeling, then you may be right.  I have no idea - is that what they do?  Given the budgets, at least pre-cap, I'd be amazed if the teams at the front are using stuff like that as-delivered. 

racerfink said:

Aero 'roads' are considerably more smooth than actual roads.  I can see how something that works in the wind tunnel wouldn't work IRL.  Plus, changing from the 15" to 18" tires, with their shorter sidewall, has changed the relative spring rate at each corner.

Yeah, I agree on the wind tunnel front.  But you can make the road as bumpy as you want in a computer sim.  Assuming you can figure out how to get all the coupling right between the road, the aero, the suspension, etc.  Not saying it's easy.

racerfink said:

Aero 'roads' are considerably more smooth than actual roads.  I can see how something that works in the wind tunnel wouldn't work IRL.  Plus, changing from the 15" to 18" tires, with their shorter sidewall, has changed the relative spring rate at each corner.

They also mentioned that they generally won't allow the car to ground out- even for aero reasons- on the wind tunnel track as it will tear it.  But they should certainly be capable of modeling the problem of grounding out due to downforce at speed- which *should* break the seal just grounding the vehicle.

Looks like the FIA is doing something:  https://www.fia.com/news/fia-takes-steps-reduce-porpoising-interests-safety

In addition to paying more attention to the existing plank rules, it also says "The definition of a metric, based on the car’s vertical acceleration, that will give a quantitative limit for acceptable level of vertical oscillations."

To me that sounds like "stick a gee sensor in there and require that it not exceed some value", so if RBR has truly beaten it then it shouldn't affect them.

I'll bet they already have the accelerometers in place, as they're measuring crash severity. So it's just a matter of defining acceptable limits. 

I wonder if this will have the accidental side effect of penalizing aggressive curb use?

I bet the folks at RB are getting a great laugh from this. I was thinking that this was a good solution. As the only team that isn't porpoising at all they are going to have a nice advantage (as they should, they built a better mousetrap). This may even limit Ferrari, there car isn't bounce free.

Edit: I bet the rule has an oscillation to go with a max force so things like road bumps or curbs are taken out. 

From what I've read on F1 sites. Most drivers think not a big deal and all Mercedes needs to do is raise their car but that would slow them down. Maybe they need to change the rules to say that only Mercedes/Hamilton are allowed to win. 

In reply to JimS :

Like the way Ferrari was treated a few years back :) The joke was that FIA stood for Ferrari International Assistance or something like that. But this rule is the exact opposite.

It's legit to make sure the drivers aren't being hurt to the point where they're distracted from piloting their vehicle. It's the same reason the WEC has rules about maximum cockpit temperatures and why most of those cars have AC.

JimS said:

From what I've read on F1 sites. Most drivers think not a big deal and all Mercedes needs to do is raise their car but that would slow them down. Maybe they need to change the rules to say that only Mercedes/Hamilton are allowed to win. 

And I've seen other articles that suggest that this problems is across all of the cars- that even Ricciardo got out of his car and was holding his back.   But we only talk about Hamilton, since he's the best drive out there who is struggling with his back.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to JimS :

Like the way Ferrari was treated a few years back :) The joke was that FIA stood for Ferrari International Assistance or something like that. But this rule is the exact opposite.

It's legit to make sure the drivers aren't being hurt to the point where they're distracted from piloting their vehicle. It's the same reason the WEC has rules about maximum cockpit temperatures and why most of those cars have AC.

Exactly, this actually hurts Mercedes.  If they can't get the bouncing under control, they will have to raise the car which will make it slower in it's current configuration.    This does nothing to penalize RB, because their car isn't bouncing as badly.  And while the Ferrari does bounce, it doesn't seem to be beating it's drivers to death..

This article isn't that interesting but the video is. It is 10 minutes but good technical content, more dimensions than I had previous thought about, changes through the race and from testing to now.  Good stuff.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.fia-to-introduce-measures-to-control-porpoising-in-the-interest-of-safety.68ksm55ASFylepFVUS4yGy.html

In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :

Could be beating the powertrain to literal death, though.  

In reply to NY Nick :

So the data is already available- no new sensors or anything needed.

alfadriver said:

In reply to 06HHR (Forum Supporter) :

Could be beating the powertrain to literal death, though.  

Charles and Carlos are strapping young lads, they could get out and push a bit..

Also, even RBR is having porpoising problems on some tracks in some sessions.  Nobody on the team is talking about it, but you can see it in the videos.  They've got a better handle on it than anybody else, but it's far from perfect.

As for the "why do we need a rule, just raise the ride height" argument, it's the same as any safety requirements.  You make the rule so that there is no mixed incentives where the team has to balance performance against safety.  Same as a crash structure, same as a HANS device, same as the seat belts and anything else -- you meet the safety requirements or the car is disqualified and that removes any incentive to push the limits.

Has Lewis pulled the nails out of his body yet, or has that just kinda gone away?