Ferrari’s 'porpoising' F1 car made Leclerc feel ill

During the recent first pre-season test at Barcelona, almost every team suffered from the phenomenon known as porpoising, a direct result of F1’s new ground-effect based technical regulations for the 2022 cars. 

A video shared by F1 on its social media channels demonstrated Leclerc experiencing the bizarre, high-frequency bouncing as he hit top speed at the end of Barcelona’s main straight. 

Leclerc explained that the uncomfortable sensation felt like turbulence on a flight. 

“It feels like turbulence on an aeroplane, going up and down the whole straight,” said Leclerc.

“I think one of the videos that F1 posted shows this phenomenon quite well, and I can’t say it feels nice. It makes you a little bit ill, but it’s OK.

“It’s still very early days for this project. So it feels like it’s an issue that everyone has in the paddock more or less but in this paddock all the best engineers of the world are here so I’m pretty sure that we’ll find a solution soon.”

Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto said F1 teams had underestimated the potential for the new 2022 cars to suffer from porpoising, despite anticipating such behaviour. 

However, he doesn’t think it will be long before teams have got on top of the issue. 

“I think that solving it can be quite straightforward,” he said. 

“Optimising the performance, because it should not be a compromise, you should try to avoid the bouncing by getting the most of the performance of the car. But that could be a less easy exercise.

“I am pretty sure that at some stage the team will get to the solution. How long it will take? The ones that will get there sooner will have an advantage at the start of the season.