Formula 1 teams which have altered their cars in response to the FIA’s technical directive on porpoising could put themselves at risk of a protest, says Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer.
Under the technical directive teams have been told certain changes to their floors will be permitted in order to reduce the severe bouncing they have experienced. These include the adding of an additional floor stay.However Szafnauer says the directive does not carry the force of regulation and any such changes could be considered outside the rules. He added it was issued too late in the day for Alpine to take advantage of the opportunity to alter its floor.
“The TD came out when our chief technical officer was flying over, so it was quite late and we aren’t able to produce a stay here,” he said. “As far as the process goes, it’s a technical directive and technical directives, as we all know, aren’t regulations.
“So it could very well be that we shouldn’t be running this in qualifying and the race. And if teams have brought those stays, I would imagine they could be perhaps looked at after and protested. So it’s against the regulation as it stands today.
“But we definitely don’t have one and unfortunately, if you do have an extra stay, you can run the car lower and stiffer and gain some advantage.”
Alpine will be able to adapt their floor in line with the TD before the next round at Silverstone in two weeks’ time, he added.
“But we’ve chosen to stiffen the floor in that area at the expense of weight. And as we all discuss there’s some cars that are still overweight and that’s a trade-off decision you make between adding weight to the car so you can stiffen the floor. If you’re just given a stay then you don’t have to add the weight and do the same job.”
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Rival team principals also expressed their disappointment at the timing of the directive. “It was not really ideal because we have all the team travelling, everything is on-site,” said Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack.
AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost said “the timing was absolutely not good because most of the people were travelling and just to send out the technical directive a few days before the race is for sure not the best.
“To the reaction time, especially the floor of a Formula 1 car, it’s very [sensitive] part it’s not just [you] put any parts on it without investigations.
“So we from Scuderia AlphaTauri have to find out what we do, which direction we will take to the technical directive regarding stiffening of the floor or whatever, and this takes some time. For sure we will not do it here and then we will see what we can arrange for Silverstone.”
Teams’ floors at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
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petebaldwin (@)
18th June 2022, 17:50
Yet another example of how the teams view performance as something more important than safety. The drivers (the ones at risk) congratulated the FIA on the speed with which they tried to address this problem. Of course, the teams don’t care about safety unless it benefits them…
Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
18th June 2022, 17:57
Whenever Otmas Szafnauer is offering an opinion on the rules of Formula 1 one can safely assume the opposite to be true.
Bradders (@bradders)
18th June 2022, 20:01
Perhaps it was just too late for him to ask this technical team to make a copy of someone else’s…
DaveW (@dmw)
18th June 2022, 18:21
Cars have had these stays since testing so I’m not sure how teams adding them in a possibly desperate attempt to have driveable cars prejudices anyone.
mantresx (@mantresx)
18th June 2022, 18:29
So what are their options now?
Go to a local machine shop and borrow the lathe for a couple of hours to make extra stays??
This is very strange.
DaveW (@dmw)
18th June 2022, 18:34
You get get some 6mm steel rod at Canadian Tire and a dremel and some epoxy to mount it.
Mike
18th June 2022, 18:38
Did I miss something? I don’t recall seeing this portion of the TD ever being reported previously.
Ralph Williams
19th June 2022, 0:44
That’s because technical directives are not made available to the public. Imagine other sports changing the rules mid-season and not even making them public knowledge for the fans or even the bettors.
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
18th June 2022, 19:46
My understanding is Technical Regulation 4.1 sets a minimum car weight (775 kg), not a maximum weight. That suggests to me a car cannot be overweight because there are no rules stating what the maximum weight of a car is.
Johnny Five
18th June 2022, 23:49
In F1 World, if the minimum weight is 775 kg, then the maximum weight is 775.1 kg.
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
19th June 2022, 5:49
@drycrust I don’t see the confusion. Your own post even quotes a specific weight. Unsurprisingly going ‘over’ that weight is considered ‘overweight’.
S
19th June 2022, 11:11
Being over (minimum) weight is not a legality concern.
Arthur
19th June 2022, 8:43
I thought to have read that the biggest concern of the teams was that apparently only Mercedes had these second stays on their cars. And Zak Brown and Josh Capito were questioning how one team guessed that this TD would come out and were already prepared.
Mike
19th June 2022, 16:12
That’s what I’m seeing as well. The TD was released Thursday. The Mercedes cars showed up to the event with the second set of floor stays already in place. While they aren’t installed in the photo in this article, the outboard anchor for the second floor stay is still clearly visible.
These facts somewhat put Szafnauer’s comments in a different light, do they not?