(Motorsport) Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has accused the FIA’s technical directive after stricter guidelines were introduced with driver safety at the forefront due to porpoising. The new rules will mean that teams suffering from the issue will now be forced to limit the level of “vertical oscillations” in order to protect the drivers while the FIA will also have “closer scrutiny of the planks and skids, both in terms of their design and the observed wear”.
The reception to the rule change has been mixed as both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc have criticised the decision while both the Mercedes drivers have welcomed the move. In an interview with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, the 48 year old said “The FIA, you can understand safety being their main concern, but to drop a technical directive like that just as we’re coming into a weekend, without any consultation, it just feels the wrong way to be going about thing I think there needs to be proper consultation with the experts.
“A solution can be found. It’s a very dangerous thing to be giving the FIA the right to set up your rear ride height and your set-up going into a race. What happens if the wind changes during the race? What happens if the porpoising gets worse for whatever reason, based on the baseline they give? So it’s the metric with, how could they measure it? To apply this regulation – that’s what needs to be discussed. The intent is all well and good but it’s not been introduced in the right way.”
Horner has said that the FIA’s directive is too complicated and there is a simpler method of dealing with the issue. “There’s so many things they could do that would just be easier,” Horner explained.“ Stick a bigger plank on it, for example, that would get the cars off the ground. Trying to mitigate, judge between one car and another… maybe we’ll benefit from it, maybe we won’t, I’ve got no idea. It seems a very complicated way to go about solving an issue. It’s not an issue which affects all of the teams. I think the inference should be on the teams to get it sorted. There’s a set of regulations that are consistent for everybody there.”
Also read: F1 changes regulations to combat porpoising, Mercedes welcome the move
