AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost says Formula 1 drivers need to train more to cope with the harsher ride in this year’s cars or go home and watch races on television.
Tost said past drivers had tolerated similarly uncomfortable cars when ground effects were previously used in Formula 1.
“Now the drivers complain about it,” he said. “On one hand, I can understand it’s not so easy for them. On the other hand, this is a Formula 1 car.
“I remember back when the ‘wing cars’ were out there, there was a driver coming to me on Sunday evening and says ‘tomorrow I have to go to the dentist because I lose my fillings in the bend because the cars are so hard to drive’. It’s nothing new.”
He said drivers will have to train harder to cope with the bouncing, and believes the technical directive issued by the FIA this week will help address the problem.
“First of all, the drivers must do more training for the neck muscles and for the gluteus maximus, then this helps for sure,” said Tost. “And the FIA is coming now with this technical directive which, of course, will help to find out how big are the forces, and then when they create this metric, maybe we can find a way to reduce the bouncing and the forces which are coming to the drivers.
“How much this can be controlled, I don’t know yet. But at Scuderia AlphaTauri we support the FIA, we will give them the data and then we will see what could be the result.”
However, he believes drivers will also have to learn to tolerate the more severe bumping created by the current generation of cars.
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“These are Formula 1 cars,” said Tost. “This is not a Rolls-Royce, and drivers should be aware about this.
“If the cars are too stiff or it’s too difficult for them, maybe they should stay at home in the living room, sitting in the chair, and then they can do the races in TV or where, I don’t know.”
The porpoising and bottoming drivers have suffered since the start of the year has arisen as an issue due to the new technical regulations which were introduced for this season. Tost said this outcome was anticipated.
“When this new regulation was created it was clear from the very beginning onwards that these cars will not be easy to drive,” he said.
“Why? Because this floor with kind of a venturi [principle] makes it necessary that the car’s set up quite stiff, that the cars are quite…
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