Lando Norris has revealed that he is suffering from back pains caused by the current generation of F1 machinery. The British driver is one of many to have complained about the porpoising and bottoming out caused by these ground-effect cars.
Porpoising has been a serious problem for the teams and drivers since the new technical regulations came into effect at the beginning of last season with Mercedes, Ferrari and Alpine among the teams suffering from the most serious bouncing on the straights.
The bouncing caused so much discomfort that the FIA was forced to introduce a technical directive last season, forcing teams to set up their cars with a minimum level of ground clearance in order to avoid injury to the drivers. Unfortunately, porpoising remains a problem.
Speaking about the issues ahead of the Italian Grand Prix, Norris said: “I wouldn’t say no, if we could have softer cars or something that makes it a bit more like it was in 2019, 2020, 2021.
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“I’ve struggled a lot with my back. I’ve had to make quite a few seats and do a lot more training just to try and strengthen my back, my lower back. I’ve had a lot of issues over the last 12 months or so. Similar to Carlos [Sainz].
“I guess everyone’s had different things and struggles with different bits and cars are different and whatever. A bit of it including the car and how stiff it is. I’ve struggled quite a bit.”
While the porpoising experienced by F1 cars doesn’t present a danger to the drivers, it does cost them in terms of both lap time and comfort. Reporting back earlier this season, Valtteri Bottas explained: ”Everyone will always search for performance versus comfort. You take it, even with not being so comfortable in the car.”
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Martin Brundle has explained the reason why the cars experience such vicious bouncing, explaining on Sky Sports F1: “The underneath of the car generates an awful lot of downforce on these ground-effect cars. It works in conjunction with the ground to generate this incredible downward load.
“Teams run them as low as they can get away with but, occasionally it just chokes especially on a bump. The car goes down, loses downforce, comes up, gains downforce, goes back down again and this motion goes on. The last thing you need coming into that final corner is the car kicking off like that.”
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