Drivers were asked about Porpoising during the press conference on the third day of testing about the issue that seems to affect most of the 2022 cars at present. 

In a video posted by F1 on social media, it showed the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc bouncing violently on the main straight in Barcelona. Porpoising hasn't been seen in F1 since the 1980s - but it seems to be back at the moment. 

Pierre Gasly: “I must say it´s not that pleasant. It was a bit shocking the first time it happened when we tried the car. We didn´t really expect it but it´s just about finding ways to go around it. We know that in certain circumstances in the race with safety cars and tyre pressure dropping we may face this and it may become an issue in the race. We´ll have to think about all these difficult situations will get a lot worse but at the moment we have put development in place to try to improve that. There´s clearly some performances and some teams got it better than others. I´m not in a bad place but clearly we can do better and also on the wet in all sort of conditions we need to be prepared to know what to expect.”

Lando Norris agreed and added: “It´s just trying to understand it and optimize it, find a better way around it. It´s more annoying than anything else. If it continues to the braking zone it has some effect on the braking zone. You can see from the video of Charles how hard it was. We need to make some progress on that.”

George Russell believes it can be a concern in terms of safety: “It has the potential to be a safety concern it gets out of control and obviously you are flat out on the straight and it starts happening you don´t want to back off in a race scenario. We just saw with Charles ‘video how bad it was for them. I think we´ll need to find the solution. I guess if active suspension was there that could be solved with a click of your fingers and the car would naturally be a lot faster if we had that. I´m sure all teams are capable of that so that could be. I don´t know for sure but let´s see in Bahrain. I´m sure all the teams will come up with some smart ideas around this issue.”

Valtteri Bottas explained: “It affects a bit of everything for sure. It´s not very comfortable if it happens. Visually it gets a bit tricky and obviously you lose overall load. The level of the downforce goes up and down and it can affect the braking as well and one concern obviously if you carry on like that is the reliability of certain parts in the car so, I think that´s quite a new thing for every team to learn how to deal with and how to optimize the set up to avoid it. I would say it´s for sure being for everyone a bit of a challenge.”

Aston Martin´s driver, Lance stroll agreed with his colleagues describing the impact on their bodies: “It´s pretty uncomfortable. It rattles your brain quite a bit and it´s not nice on the lower back but it´s just a part of understanding these new ground effect cars. The lower you run them you know the better. This bouncing porpoising has been a limitation. It´s not comfortable, not ideal for the reliability part. The balance of the car never feels great going into a corner when it´s bouncing up and down. Definitely something to work on and think about going forward.

Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz added: “It doesn´t feel great obviously, especially when you think we´re doing 300 kph and we´re jumping 30, 40 millimeters up and down like crazy. Hopefully, it´s resolved and it´s not something that we need to live with because it´s quite on the limit. You have to trust the engineers and everyone around it that it´s just gonna keep getting better as we learn these ground floor cars.”

Alex Albon who returns to F1 for Williams said: “It isn´t fun to drive but at the end of the day at leats for here it´s not terrible. I think if we start going to circuits like Silverstone and Suzuka. If you went to the 130r it may be a little bit trickier. So, hopefully, we have enough time at that point to address the issues. It´s not an immediate fix. There needs to be a bit of work done in the next few weeks for sure.”

Mick Schumacher concluded: “We are all aligned on that. The issue is there. It´s just a matter of how we solve it and I think reliability is going to be an issue probably at the start but I´m sure that over time we´ll probably get there.”