Fred Vasseur: “Anticipating and fixing porpoising is currently the greatest challenge in F1”. Fred Vasseur on the greatest challenge in F1.

Porpoising, a constant enemy
“In Hungary, we expected to have a weekend as frontrunners, but we didn’t perform as expected. In Belgium, we expected to struggle a bit more, and then in the end, we were very competitive. We need to work to understand why our expectations ahead of race weekends often turn out to be incorrect, both positively and negatively.” Charles Leclerc, at the end of the Spa-Francorchamps weekend in Stavelot, highlighted that in Belgium, he had a “pleasant surprise” in the sense that the Ferrari SF-23 performed very well, allowing tire management during the race, being the second strongest force behind Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez’s Red Bull cars.

For Scuderia Ferrari, the 2023 Formula One season has frequently seen the Italian side falling short of pre-race expectations, expectations that had been bolstered by ambitious forecasts from team principal Frederic Vasseur. The work of simulation and preparation in these cases has come under scrutiny. However, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the tasks carried out in Maranello have allowed Ferrari to consistently perform well in the three Sprint weekends held so far in Azerbaijan, Austria, and Belgium.

Fred Vasseur himself has stressed that the greatest technical challenge in current Formula 1 is to anticipate and understand phenomena related to this aspect, namely porpoising and bouncing, which in Belgium, for instance, reappeared to affect the performance of the Mercedes W14: “The biggest technical challenge in current Formula 1 is to understand and anticipate bouncing, which isn’t visible in wind tunnel testing in a real way – the words of the team principal of Maranello interviewed by Autosprint – once on the track, the only way to manage them is to raise the car, losing tenths.” – the French manager explained.

“If you only work on simulations, you don’t know if you need to raise the car by just a millimeter or three and what the effect will be. Sometimes, you think you’re improving by two tenths, but instead, you go slower. In Barcelona, we brought a good update, but we didn’t grasp it immediately, and the outcome of the grand prix was negative.” – Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur concluded.