Binotto claims 'porpoising' no longer a problem for Ferrari

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Ferrari principal Mattia Binotto says that his team has already got on top of the 'porpoising' problems that many teams ran into during this week's pre-season shakedown tests at Barcelona.

The new rules and regulations for 2022 and the reintroduction of ground effect downforce have meant teams have had to make far-reaching changes to their cars this season.

One of the side-effects of the changes was a widespread porpoising phenomenon, or excessive bouncing on straights, affecting the handling of the cars and disrupting the downforce levels of F1's new designs.

Read also: Russell says porpoising effect a 'safety concern' for some teams

Despite Charles Leclerc topping the times on Wednesday morning, Ferrari had been one of the teams to suffer. However Binotto insists that his technical team have already found a way to deal with the issue.

“On the bouncing, I think it was an issue but it's not any more," he told the media at the Circuit de Catalunya on Friday. "Somehow we are managing the situation.”

“If we're looking at this on Thursday afternoon and earlier on Friday, I think we are bouncing a lot less."

Leclerc went on to top the timesheets on Thursday, but he was only sixth on the final day of the test on Friday with team mate Carlos Sainz one spot further back, in a session dominated by Mercedes and Red Bull.

But Binotto was satisfied with how the team did overall, with Sainz ending up with the most laps completed after 236 tours of the Spanish circuit - a total of 1103km.

“We are happy, first because I think we have done a lot of laps,” Binotto confirmed. “We have learned from the car, collecting data.

"But I think if you look at the performance of the lap time it is too early days," he cautioned, not wanting to allow expectations to get ahead of them at this point.

“We are not running all in the same conditions, and I am expecting other cars to be very fast.

“More for us was to be consistent running, and really try to collect as much data as we could," he explained. "There are still a lot of issues to address or potential to extract."

All the teams will have a short interval to complete their analysis and implement any changes before the full pre-season test at Bahrain next month, just a week before the first Grand Prix of 2022 at the same venue.

"We will be back in Maranello before to go to Bahrain and we have a few days really to look at all the data and try somehow to optimise the current car," Binotto commented.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.