Truth varies

 

The governing body of Formula One racing sets standards for how Formula One cars have to be designed.  Within these standards every team does the best they can to create the fastest car on the track.  The standards don’t stay the same forever.  Once every few years, the standards are updated, upgraded, to take advantage of newer technology, and all the teams have to design and perfect new cars.  Here is what the 2022 Ferrari looks like.

The revisions that took effect this season incorporate more “ground effects”.  That means the underside of the car is designed to reduce air pressure underneath the car, pulling it down to provide more traction, allowing it to corner at higher speeds.  The underbody of the car kind of acts like an airplane wing, but instead of providing lift, it works in reverse to pull the car down tighter to the track.  An unintended consequence of this design revision resulted in “porpoising” at high speeds however.  Porpoising is when the car is pulled down so hard it touches the track, or bottoms out the suspension, breaking the suction underneath so that the car bounces back up on the suspension before being pulled back down by the ground effects, until the process repeats, and so on.  At two hundred miles per hour, that can be a problem.

 

Now, halfway through the season, with the constructors unable to solve the problem, drivers of these newly designed cars are claiming that this bouncing is so hard on their bodies that it is a health risk, and a safety risk.  They may suffer physical damage from the pounding, and they may become unable to control a “porpoising” car at high speed and crash.  “Change the design parameters.  You have to protect the drivers from injury.  It’s not fair.”

 

Hard to argue that.  We can all tell the problem is real just by watching this all unfold in front of us on the television screen.  But wait.  There is another perspective.  Of the ten teams trying to deal with this inherent design issue, a couple of the teams have done better than the others at minimizing the porpoising of their cars.  They say, “Not so fast.  We’re not having a problem.  You’re going to change the rules so the people who can’t figure out the solution can catch up to us?  That’s not fair!”

 

Uh oh.  Competing truths!  Porpoising cars are unsafe to drive.  True.  Change the rules.  But some of the teams have figured out the problem, now have the advantage, and changing the rules in the middle of the season would award an unfair benefit to their competitors.  Also true!

 

The governing body of Formula One is called the FIA.  They created this mess.  They’re going to have to figure it out.