Porpoises have been a hot topic with Mercedes drivers being vocal about the bounce they endured, but it seemed to be even worse in Baku.
George Russell went so far as to say it’s “a matter of time before we see a major incident”.
“Many of us can barely keep the car in a straight line over these bumps and we’re going through the last two corners at 300km/h [in Baku] and we’re bottoming out and you can visibly see on the tarmac how close the cars get to the ground,” said the Mercedes rising star. “It’s just unnecessary with the technology we have in the current environment, it just seems unnecessary for us to be driving a Formula 1 car more than 200mph millimeters off the ground and it’s a recipe for disaster.
“I don’t really know what the future holds, but I don’t think we can last for three years, or however long these regulations are in place.”
According to BBC, Russell raised concerns with the FIA about the safety of the bottomed cars at the drivers’ briefing on Friday. F1’s new technological regulations allow the cars to track each other more closely, but in an effort to maximize performance, the cars drive closer to the ground to help under-floor aerodynamics efficiency.
In some cases, this has led to porpoises, which is essentially the cars bouncing up and down on the straights. The aerodynamic phenomenon can be caused by a car driving too close to the ground or by a bumpy road surface, such as at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Russell made it clear that he is not bringing the matter up because of a competitive advantage, but rather because of a real safety issue.
“I mean, for what it’s worth, we’re not that massively in favor of it” [regulation change] as a team because with every race we do we learn more and more about the car and any changes will limit that learning. So it’s not that we want it to change, it’s clearly a security restriction,” said Russell, per ESPN† “The top three teams are also in the same position, Ferrari and Red Bull, well Ferrari more than Red Bull, you can clearly see they’re really struggling with that. Nobody is doing it for performance improvement, it’s for safety reasons.
Scroll to continue
“I can barely see the braking zone because I bounce so much. You go through those last two turns [in Baku]you have walls all around you and you are going 200mph and the car is bouncing up and down on the floor – it’s not a very comfortable position to be in. As a group, we need a little rethinking.
“It certainly feels dangerous. It just feels unnecessary. You skate along the track and when you hit the ground the bonds aren’t that strong with the ground so it’s only a matter of time before we see anything. †
Russell and teammate Lewis Hamilton are not the only ones to have mentioned the concern over porpoises. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz brought up the issue ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix last month.
He revealed to Motorsport that he too “already feels” the effects of the suspension and porpoises.
“I think it’s going to be a big challenge,” Sainz said. “I think the curbs in Miami already felt quite aggressive in these cars. There were a few bumps in Imola that were quite hard on the body. More than Monaco we have to think about [about] as drivers and F1 how much toll does a driver have to pay for his back and his health in an F1 career with this kind of car philosophy? I think we need to open the debate more than anything.
“I love the rules. They do exactly what we need to race. But should we be running as stiff as we’ve been running lately, with this car mass? For me it’s more of a philosophical question I’m asking there, maybe for F1 and everyone else to reconsider how much the driver actually has to pay a price in his career with his health, to combat this. †
Sainz added that he “has done my usual checks on my back and neck tension, and I see I’m tighter all over this year. I don’t need expert advice to know it’s going to be tough for 10 years like this and you a lot of work needs to be done on mobility and flexibility.”
More Formula 1 coverage:
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()
{n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)}
;if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
(function(){
fbq(‘init’, ‘1103097776498609’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
var contentId = ‘ci02a3801530002519’;
if (contentId !== ”) {
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’, {content_ids: [contentId], content_type: ‘product’});
}
})();
