On the right track?
The consensus throughout the Formula 1 paddock is that the 2022 technical regulations see the most significant changes to any rule set in the sport’s history. At time of writing, the 2022 season was about to get underway, with both pre-season tests complete and teams carrying out final engineering on the cars ahead of the first race in Bahrain.
The journey into the new era of the sport has been a bumpy one so far, in every sense of the word, as teams faced a plethora of technical challenges throughout the testing weeks, primarily revolving around so-called porpoising – a bouncing phenomenon caused by the car’s inability to control its platform, stemming from extreme swings in downforce generated by the ground-effect aerodynamics. However, the chances for teams to explore how their cars behave in the real world before competition starts in earnest is now almost over.
Racecar Engineering ( RE) had the opportunity to sit down with Red Bull Racing’s chief technical officer, Adrian Newey, and ask his views on this latest era of Formula 1.
RE: First of all, can you explain the porpoising challenges?
‘It’s a classic control theory problem. When you have a set of aerodynamic regulations that allow ground effect, the closer the car gets to the ground, the more downforce it gives. If those vortices or structures, or whatever it might be, that give you that downforce starts to
