Aston Martin trying to ‘reverse out of the trap’ that is porpoising

Aston Martin chief technical officer Andrew Green says his team is one of those trying to reverse out of the porpoising trap.

With Formula 1’s switch to ground-effect aerodynamics for 2022, this bouncing phenomenon, known as porpoising, has caught many of the teams off-guard.

“It slowed us down,” Green confirmed to Auto Motor und Sport.

Some have responded and adapted better than others, and Aston Martin are one of those still digging for a solution.

“To be honest, it slowed everybody down. Some just don’t feel it as much because the flow field of their cars works with more ground clearance,” Green added.

Green revealed that all the simulations pointed towards a low ride height and firm suspension being the way to go, but that did not translate when the AMR22 hit the track.

Slowly the team has shown signs of recovery since a dismal opening few races, though still only six points have been scored after five rounds.

“We went low and hard. In our simulations, this rewarded us again and again,” said Green.

“The car got better with each step. We could see the goal, so it seemed the right way to go. None of our tests suggested that it would give us a problem with the instability of the car.

“Other teams that have gone our way now have big problems because our car concept loses massive amounts of lap time when it falls out of that window of car height that it was designed for.

“The problem was only identified when the cars went out on track. Now we’re all trying to get back out of the trap in reverse.

“It’s not a job that gets done overnight. It’s a complex process because you have to leave your development concept and go a different way. By now we have all realised that this phenomenon is a legacy of these rules. Some have managed it well, others not so much. We belong to that group at the moment.”

Asked if Aston Martin are at the better or worse end of the scale for teams suffering with the bouncing, Green replied: “Definitely at…