Mercedes: "Giving up performance was the best thing we could do in face of porpoising"

In the 2022 F1 season, Mercedes were one of the teams that faced issues regarding porpoising. The bouncing effect was experienced by several teams due to the new floor changes imposed by the FIA. Though this drastically reduced the dirty air behind each car, which improved racing, it also gave birth to porpoising.

In an interview with Autosport, Mercedes' trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, explained how the team dealt with the bouncing issue at the start of the season.

He gave an insight into how the team had to increase the car's height and compromise on the performance. Shovlin also revealed how the porpoising increased quite a lot after Mercedes introduced new parts to their car right before the first race in Bahrain. He said:

“At the time about the best thing you could do was just lift the car off the ground, give up performance and manage it that way. That car was defined much, much earlier in the development programme than the race one package. But the issue… at the time in Barcelona, we thought: ‘We’re not the quickest, but we don’t think we we’re in a bad place’. Because we were expecting to add good performance with that Bahrain package."

He further added:

“The issue was that when we fitted it, the porpoising was a whole other level. Most of the performance that we intended to add didn’t materialise because we had to lift the car even further and at that point you couldn’t get rid of the bouncing.”

Of course, we have seen the Silver Arrows struggle with aerodynamic issues throughout the season. Since they had to reduce the car's height to squeeze performance, they experienced a lot of porpoising. The vertical oscillations were so severe that the FIA had to step in and create new rules to specifically tackle the bouncing.

---

Former F1 driver feels 2023 regulation changes could affect Mercedes

Karun Chandhok, a former F1 driver turned TV pundit, believes that Mercedes could suffer from the new regulations imposed by the FIA for the 2023 F1 season. Even though the new rule changes are insignificant compared to 2022, since they are related to the car's height, Mercedes could be affected by them the most.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1, the Indian driver said:

"There's a regulation change next year, which is small but not insignificant in terms of the ride heights. The cars have all got to run at a higher ride height. Which is the one team historically that hasn't run at a high ride height? The brain power that won all those World Championships is still there in Brackley and Brixworth. But I don't think it's as easy to fix yet as you might think."

Karun Chandhok mentioned how keeping a lower car height has been one of the strongest tactics that Mercedes have used during their dominant era. Hence, the new increased ride height rule could hamper the Silver Arrows' performance in 2023.