A number of drivers in particular mercedes” George RussellLast weekend, the motorsports governing body urged action to eliminate the rebound phenomenon from the current generation of cars due to health and safety concerns.
The FIA responded almost immediately with a new technical directive issued to teams ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix detailing a business plan.
In addition to starting a data-gathering exercise to try to establish a maximum vertical car acceleration and jump, the teams were allowed to make minor tweaks to their floors from this weekend’s race to help strengthen it.
The impact of the competitive system of changes, as well as any future restrictions the FIA might impose in terms of car setup, are currently unclear – but teams with fewer porpoise problems aren’t thrilled that they can do so. suffer as well.
And Leclerc, in particular, is upset about it Ferrari You might lose the edge you got from working on the problem just because other teams couldn’t handle things.
Asked by Motorsport.com about the FIA’s involvement in the porpoise debate, Leclerc said: “On the one hand, I obviously understand George’s point, because when you see him and Lewis getting out of their car after Baku, it’s too bad.
“You can probably feel the pain Lewis is going through right now. That’s unacceptable.
“But, on the other hand, also, you cannot underestimate the amount of work that has been done in the last few months by the teams to really catch these issues. This has been our main priority since the first time we tried these cars.
“We’ve worked around these issues. I think the improvement has been tremendous, and now all the work we’ve done, [do we] Just throw it in the trash because obviously there’s one team that struggles the most.
“That’s my point. I obviously understand that it’s very bad at Mercedes, but I also think that maybe there are fixes for this.”
George Russell, Mercedes-AMG
Photography: Carl Bingham / motorsports pictures
Russell, who led the calls at the drivers’ briefing in Baku for the FIA to intervene, made it clear that it was too early to suggest teams could lose any competitive advantage with the latter measure.
“At the end of the day, the FIA are the rule makers, and they can make any regulation change they want,” he said. “Nobody who’s been sitting here knows if that will improve their performance or have a negative impact on their performance. So, we really have to see.”
“There are so many different aspects and elements to these cars that, by raising the car, it doesn’t necessarily lower or remove it. You’re walking between the porpoise and the bottom: There are two different issues at play here.
“I hope it will be easier for everyone to drive and not have a negative impact on anyone’s performance.”
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