Experiences that made the difference
In the 2022 winter tests, F1 cars characterized by the return of ground effect showed a tendency to bounce conspicuously. The phenomenon of 'porpoising' in fact caught most of the teams by surprise, to the point that Frederic Vasseur, then team principal of Alfa Romeo-Sauber, had asked Ferrari if the Fiorano asphalt was particularly bumpy compared to the year previous.
Obviously the Fiorano asphalt had nothing new compared to the previous shakedowns, simply the aerodynamic rebound as a side effect of the ground effect it had not been calculated or taken into account in the design phase by a generation of technicians who had not previously taken into account the ground effect.
Adrian Newey, however, had already seen first-hand what ground effect could have in store in terms of anomalous behavior on the part of the single-seaters. Interviewed by the newspaper The-Race.com the aerodynamics wizard working for Red Bull explained that already in his first experience in F1 working for Fittipaldi from 1980 to 1982 he had been able to experience that porpoising was a complex phenomenon that went beyond simple aerodynamics.
“The problem of aerodynamic bounce is multidimensional – explained Newey – it's obviously the aerodynamic shape of the car itself, which is then coupled with the suspension and perhaps the rigidity of the body and all sorts of things, as has gradually been discovered over the last year and a half. We must therefore consider all the factors that come into play, we cannot focus only on a single aspect. I remember when I was at Fittipaldi Harvey Postlethwaite had a passion for increasing rate rubber suspension and decided that, to save some weight on the car, he would throw away the springs and shock absorbers and just rest the car on a set of rubbers. It was the first time I went to a circuit and in the old Silverstone pits Keke Rosberg passed and the car bounced so much that you could even clearly see that the front wheels were lifting off the ground. Keke returned to the pits wide-eyed saying 'it doesn't work'. It was the first time I understood that porpoising wasn't a purely aerodynamic problem.”
#Porpoising #NeweyRed #Bull #unplayable #discovery #Silverstone #years
