One theme that has emerged from the opening two days of testing is the unusual behaviour of the 2022 cars when travelling at speed on the pit straight. As they reach top speed, almost all the cars have been spotted bouncing up and down on their suspension — a phenomenon known as porpoising.
The name describes a car mimicking the movement of a porpoise as it travels through water.
Porpoising is linked to F1’s rule changes for 2022, which have allowed teams more freedom to generate downforce from the underside of the car through the use of ground effect aerodynamics. Essentially, the length of the car is treated as an upside-down aeroplane wing with the lower surface profiled to generate low air pressure under the car and suck it to the track.
The idea of using the floor of the car to create significant amounts of downforce is nothing new. In the late 1970s and early 1980s F1 teams started to better understand the potential of ground effect aerodynamics, leading to a sudden increase in…
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