Mercedes receives bad news for 2023 from Aston Martin: "Porpoising won't disappear completely"

Aston Martin deputy technical director Eric Blandin has some bad news for Mercedes as he feels the porpoising issue will not disappear this season.

Speaking about the possible challenges that cars could face in 2023 and whether porpoising would be a thing of the past, Blandin disagreed and said that it will continue to be a feature in these new regulations.

This could prove to be an issue for a team like Mercedes, which is one of the worst-affected teams on the F1 grid. The situation got so bad at one of the races in Baku that Mercedes lead driver Lewis Hamilton was in visible physical pain after the race.

Talking about the issues with porpoising and how it could continue to be a factor, Blandin told the official Aston Martin website:

"It won’t disappear completely. It’s something that’s inherent within this set of regulations. You’ve got big tunnels channelling air underneath a car that is running very close to the ground and effectively has a skirt created by the floor edge that’s sealing the air in – this combination is what makes the car susceptible to porpoising."

Blandin added:

"Every F1 car experiences some degree of oscillation, but with the current regulations, due to the aerodynamic load and the variation in that aerodynamic load, this oscillation is more pronounced. You use the same tools – wind tunnel, CFD cluster, software – but it’s all about how you extract the data and how you use it."

Blandin explained that the main issue with porpoising is that it is far too complicated to simulate the problem. He said:

"Simulating the problem is complicated. There aren’t many tools that can do that. On a computational side, you can’t predict it with normal software. It’s not simply a case of running the car in the wind tunnel to see whether it will porpoise: it doesn’t work like that because it’s a dynamic problem – the aerodynamic loads are constantly changing."

He added:

"Throughout the 2022 campaign, we advanced our understanding of this new generation of F1 car in several areas, and this enabled us to identify what was causing the bouncing."

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Porpoising was a major deterrent for Mercedes last season

Formula 1 Testing in Abu Dhabi - Day One

Mercedes were one of the worst affected on the grid and proof of it was visible in the violent oscillations their cars were producing.

The team did appear to have it under control in the second half of the season and that did help in producing a lot more performance from the car. Having said that, if the issue still pertains and since it can't be easily simulated, this could prove to be a major issue for Mercedes to overcome.