Porpoising
VerifiedA high-speed bouncing the current ground-effect cars can suffer when the underfloor airflow stalls and recovers in a repeating cycle.
Porpoising is a vertical bouncing motion that can build up at high speed on ground-effect cars. As the car gets low to the ground, airflow accelerating under the floor increases downforce and pulls the car down further, until the gap gets so tight the airflow stalls, downforce collapses, and the car springs back up, restarting the cycle.
It reappeared when ground-effect floors returned to F1 in 2022 after a long absence, catching several teams out in a way none had fully modelled beforehand. Some drivers reported real physical discomfort from the repeated impacts at speed, not just a performance loss.
Teams manage it mainly through ride height and floor stiffness: running the car higher avoids the stall but gives up some of the downforce the low ride height was there for in the first place, so eliminating porpoising is its own trade-off against outright pace.