Aston Martin sacrificing 0.75 seconds to fix porpoising

Sam Cooper 22 Mar 2022 3:00 PM

Lance Stroll running aero rakes on his Aston Martin. Bahrain March 2022 — Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll running aero rakes on his Aston Martin in testing. Bahrain March 2022

Aston Martin’s chief technology officer said the changes the team has made to fix the porpoising issue is costing them around 0.75s per lap.

Alongside McLaren, Aston Martin were one of the big disappointments from the Bahrain Grand Prix as Lance Stroll finished in P12 and Nico Hulkenberg in P17.

Stroll admitted the team was on a “learning curve” to try and improve while Ralf Schumacher described the AMR22 as a “disaster.”

“The team have lost the thread,” Schumacher said on AvD Motor & Sport Magazin on German TV, quoted by F1-Insider.

“They wanted to achieve too much too quickly and that simply doesn’t work in Formula 1. You can’t just take a lot of people and a lot of money, put them in a pot, stir it briefly and then something good comes out.

“The team wanted to take a bulldozer approach and that didn’t work at Toyota.”

The AMR22 appears to really struggle with porpoising and chief technology officer Andrew Green admitted that by fixing the issue, it has cost them close to three quarters of a second per lap.

“I’d say we’re still a way away from solving it the way we’d want to solve it,” said Green.

The chequered flag falls here in Bahrain. 🏁

Lance and Nico gave it everything out there tonight. #F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/kHmiCY7VtT

— Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) March 20, 2022

“We’ve had to make quite a few compromises to the car and car setup to be able to run without it. But we tried some things [in practice], we tried some things in testing as well, and we’re making, good progress.

“Currently, from where we are now, I’d say we’re probably losing in excess of half a second, probably closer to three quarters of a second because of it. It’s that sort of region.”

Both Aston Martin drivers were knocked out of qualifying in Bahrain in Q1 and had they been 0.75 seconds quicker, they would have made it to Q2 if not Q3.

Green said they were working on both an aerodynamic and mechanical issue, but suggested it could take some time to fully resolve.

”It is a bit of both, you need the two to go together,” he said.

“It’s an aerodynamic phenomenon. We know where it’s coming from, and what to do, but it’s quite an involved aerodynamic change to solve the problem. So that’s why it takes a bit of time.

“We can put patches on it and get rid of bits of it. But to do the whole thing properly, it does require a bit of a rework on the aerodynamics.

“I still think it’s going to be several races before we end up with a solution that gives us the performance we need, and gives us the aerodynamic stability that we need to go with it.

“It’s a balancing act. We can drop the performance of the car, get rid of the porpoising, but that’s no good, really. So we need to try and get both. And that’s where we’re trying to aim for the next event.

“We will make steps for the next event. But I think it’s going to be a few races before we really get on top of it and get something that is really performing.”