Charles Leclerc reveals Ferrari porpoising 'discomfort'

Ferrari

Leclerc reveals Ferrari porpoising 'discomfort'

Ferrari's bouncing was pronounced in Australia

Ewan Gale

Tuesday 12 April 2022 15:30

Charles Leclerc has detailed the level of discomfort of Ferrari's porpoising troubles.

The phenomenon has dominated the technical headlines at the start of F1's new era, with the majority of the grid trying to cope with the car bouncing as the airflow underneath causes the aero to stall as part of the ground-effect philosophy.

Most teams are losing time due to the impacts of this effect although Ferrari has so far been able to find performance despite its issues.

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At the Australian Grand Prix, however, the bouncing was more pronounced for the F1-75 which Leclerc still drove to victory to open up a healthy lead at the top of the drivers' standings.

Addressing the problem, Leclerc said: "I don't know why, but I am not very sensitive to it.

"It looks extremely bad on the on-boards, and of course, I feel it. But it doesn't disturb me too much in terms of performance."

Leclerc revealed only turn nine at Melbourne's Albert Park proved "tricky" as the car was "bouncing a lot".

Moving forward, he added: "It's definitely something we want to tackle because it doesn't help us for consistency, especially sometimes once you have bouncing in a corner, it can be a problem. So, we need to work on that.

"But I couldn't have gone faster [in Melbourne] if I didn't have the bouncing. For the restart [when battling Max Verstappen after a safety car period], it was a bit tricky, because I had it before turn one.

"So, you're never as confident to just brake extremely hard for turn one. But everything went well. It was just not so comfortable to do 58 laps like this."