Max Verstappen has questioned the need for the FIA to take steps to reduce the porpoising and bouncing drivers have experienced over the opening races of the season.
The sport’s governing body confirmed yesterday it had issued a technical directive to teams describing the steps it would take to address what it described as a safety concern.
However the world champion does not believe changes should be made to the rules during the middle of a season.
“For me, regardless if it’s going to help us or work against us, I think always these rule changes in the middle of the year, I don’t think it’s correct,” he said.
Verstappen said the teams who are suffering most from the porpoising problem could cure it by raising the ride height of their cars to reduce the severity of vertical movement.
“Of course I understand the safety part of it, but I think if you talk to every engineer in the paddock, if you raise your car, you will have less issues anyway,” he said. “Of course naturally I think ourselves, but also the team, you’ve got to try to find the limit of what you can cope with, your body itself, for performance.
“But I don’t think it’s correct that now they have to intervene and start applying these kind of rules that if you can’t deal with the porpoising, that you have to go up on ride height because it is very simple: just go up on the ride height and you won’t have these issues.”
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The FIA also said it intends to devise a metric to set a maximum limit on the severity of impact drivers can be subjected to through their suspension travel. Verstappen predicted some aspects of the FIA’s clampdown on porpoising will prove “very hard to police.”
The difficulties teams have experienced with porpoising were not anticipated when the new technical regulations for this season were devised, Verstappen believes.
“I think nobody really expected it to be like this, so that’s probably overlooked, maybe,” he said. “But we have a lot of smart people here who can find a solution to that, for sure.
“Hopefully very soon, maybe not this year, but for next year, maybe there are some solutions to get rid of that.”
However he suspects addressing the problem could lead to fundamental changes to F1’s technical regulations, which were extensively revised this year to aid overtaking.
“I think all the cars are bouncing a bit too much,” he said. “You can see clearly at the moment there are a…
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