How F1's ride-height row is close to reaching boiling point

F1

The tug of war over F1's ride height row is set to reach its peak, with more team unhappy than not, writes Chris Medland

Mercedes F1 driver Lewis Hamilton at the 2022 French GP at Paul Ricard

The row over F1 car floors is getting more and more heated

Mercedes

Author

Chris Medland

On the track, the 2022 Formula 1 world championship battles seem to be heading one way, with Ferrari and Charles Leclerc combining to hand Red Bull and Max Verstappen more points in France and leave the pair with a comfortable lead in both sets of standings.

But off it, there is a row that hasn’t just been brewing but already bubbling pretty strongly for a number of weeks that is getting ever-closer to completely boiling over.

The FIA’s decision to come up with a metric that defines what is an acceptable level of porpoising has led to changes to the regulations to try and ensure an equal way of measuring the phenomenon, as well as addressing the issue. But they’re going even further with proposed floor changes for 2023.

Ahead of the French Grand Prix, the FIA said that “in the spirit of consultation, the FIA discussed a range of aerodynamic measures with the teams” before narrowing down the changes it was keen to make for next season, when it believes car development could lead to a worsening of the porpoising problem.

Red Bull f1 team Boss Christian Horner at the 2022 British GP

Horner is against changes of technical directive

DPPI

“The FIA welcomed the constructive approach of the teams during these discussions,” was the closing remark of its statement, after outlining an intention to raise the floor edges by 25mm and also raise the underfloor diffuser throat.

But that shouldn’t be taken as a suggestion that everyone is happy. In fact, they are far from it, with the last time porpoising was really discussed being Baku.

“We need to be careful that we’re not over-reacting” Christian Horner

“Again I didn’t see any issues here [in France] – the last three or four races, we haven’t seen any issues,” Christian Horner said. “So I think that there just needs to be a common-sense solution, not rewriting the rulebook for next year at a point of the year with budget caps where they are which is just too late.

“We need to be careful that we’re not over-reacting on a few samples at one-off circuits”.

Horner has been vocal for some time on the topic, which you might expect from the championship-leading team, but he’s far from alone on this one. In fact, as many as seven teams side with him to varying degrees. Some would prefer smaller changes or none at all given their lack of porpoising, others are livid.

Alfa Romeo F1 team boss Frederic Vasseur at the 2022 French GP in Paul Ricard

Frederic Vasseur has labelled changing rules on grounds of safety as “bull****”

Alfa Romeo / Sauber

And the anger is on two fronts. One stems from the fact that we’re in late July and significant revisions to next year’s cars might be required when teams have already started work.

“We started a couple of weeks ago and it’s true that now, changing ‘just’ the edge of the floor is not ‘just’, you have to change everything,” Alfa Romeo team principal Frederic Vasseur said at the weekend, with Haas boss Guenther Steiner similarly stating that the 2023 car is in the wind tunnel.

And while both projects might be early in their conception, they are working from the baseline of this year’s car as teams were not expecting such changes to be required, especially in a cost cap era when the desire was to have stability in order to allow carryover in as many places as possible (whether they’d actually choose to carry certain parts over then being up to them).

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But Vasseur points out a potentially bigger issue with the proposed changes, or more specifically the reasoning behind them.

“From my point of view, to use safety grounds on this is just a f***ing joke,” Vasseur told RACER. “Porpoising is not safety. Porpoising is easy to fix, you just have to increase the ride height.

“I’m not sure also that the matrix for safety reasons is a good approach, because using the same thing you could say we have to police the ride height in Spa because you can have bottoming into Raidillon. So the FIA could say ‘OK you have to run the car at 30mm because below 30 you could have bottoming into Raidillon’.

“Or when the track is damp and some teams are putting on slicks first, we are taking a risk. We can crash. And they can say ‘No, you have to use slicks only when it’s under 104% (of the fastest time)’. I don’t know, but if we go down this route… It’s much more risky for the FIA because if they put a limit on slicks and someone crashes then they will be responsible because the limit is not at the right place.

“If [Fernando] Alonso for example has mega pain in the back after Spa and he was below the matrix he could complain about the matrix. I’m not sure it’s the right way to police it. Safety is always a criteria in our choices. It’s a criteria for the brake temperatures, it’s a criteria when you are using intermediates or slicks… I think it’s a bit strange.”

Mercedes f1 boss Toto Wolff at the 2022 French GP

Mercedes is one of the teams in favour of the changes

Paulo Maria / DPPI

That’s in tune with Horner, who adds: “Safety is a very easy card to stand behind, because theoretically it’s not then subject to an [F1] Commission or [FIA] World Motor Sport Council vote.

“Something can be done, but I think that it just needs to be sensible. The numbers that have been discussed are just way too extreme compared to the reality of what probably could be done.

“I’d actually dispute it is a safety issue … It’s down to the team how it chooses to operate its car. You can remove the porpoising very easily, but that’s at the sacrifice of performance.”

The FIA cannot compromise on safety, that is clear, but as Vasseur and Horner highlight, the technical directive suggests it doesn’t think it can trust the teams to do right by their drivers. And by extension, it might just be about to give itself whole new areas to police on safety grounds in the future.

As we head to Budapest, this is set to be the last race weekend before the technical directive comes into effect after the summer break. It’s going to be the final time for teams to push back firmly, ahead of a mandatory two-week factory shutdown that would make reacting to any further changes even more challenging.

For those happy with the FIA’s approach – Mercedes and two of its customer teams in the form of McLaren and Aston Martin – even they admit it’s getting very late in the day to be asking for changes to be made to the 2023 technical regulations. “I think this is about as late as you’d want to get,” McLaren technical director James Key says. “There are long lead times – gearboxes, for example, that sort of thing – which begin to mature quite heavily at this time of year and anything around that area, of course, the throat height is part of that, or any implications of the aerodynamics, which suggests that your suspension should be laid out slightly differently, and that sort of thing, it’s pretty late to be understanding that.”

The fact the FIA reiterated its plans only two weeks ago suggests it is not for budging, and when it has stated the revisions are on safety grounds it would be tough for it to row back now. But if it’s going to stand firm with the technical directive and 2023 changes then it’s got to be ready for opposition on multiple fronts, and this weekend is likely to be when that pushback is at its most public.

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