THE UNWELCOME RETURN OF PORPOISING

PICTURES

lips after the first test of the radically new 2022 cars. That word was ‘porpoising’ – and actually it wasn’t that new, as the few of us still active in F1 who were also involved in the days of skirted ground effect cars remember the phenomenon well. In fact, this troublesome effect is not just historic, as anyone who has worked with contemporary LMP cars knows. Like the new generation of F1 cars, sportscars have, for some time, incorporated design features which make porpoising prevalent, and engineers of these cars know how to tame it.