Porpoising is when the car gets too close to the ground, causing the airflow to stall which then forces the car to spring upwards.
No team struggled with the effects of it more than Mercedes, with the issue reaching a critical point during the Baku Grand Prix
After years of dominating the field, Mercedes found themselves in uncharted territory early in 2022 and it left team boss Toto Wolff seething - and his frustrations boiling over during a meeting of team principals.
Wolff controlled the floor as he brought up the safety issues of porpoising, delivering a damning threat to all the other teams in the process.
“I hear a lot of chit chat about porpoising. The Chinese whispers through the press, little emails being sent,” Wolff says.
“I can tell you that all of you are playing a dangerous game. If a car ends in the wall because it’s too stiff or it’s bottoming out you are in the s*** and I am going to come after you.”
That threat from the Mercedes boss clearly gets under the skin of his counterparts as Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto attempts to interject before Red Bull’s Horner jumps in.
“Hang on a second, are we playing to the cameras here? I think this is probably better off camera,” Horner says.
Wolff snaps back: “I don’t care. If you think this is a little game or performance you are very, very wrong. Each of you has done something to limit the problem, congratulations.”
A clearly fed up Horner delivers his parting shot at the man he has built a rather heated rivalry with: “Change your car. You’ve got a problem, change your f***ing car.”
That only riles Wolff further as he bites back telling the Red Bull boss one of his own has been complaining about the issue.
“You change your car. Checo (Sergio Perez) has been saying the car is f***ed,” Wolff says.
“Checo has been on the record, I have it printed out.”
The heated exchange is finally brought to an end by Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali.
As the team principals depart the meeting, they’re all stunned as to what had just unfolded with many believing Wolff had lashed out because of Mercedes’ poor start to the season.
“I don’t know if there was some element of showmanship going on there or not, but obviously we were all accused that we want to hurt people, which we don’t want by the way we’re not killers,” Haas’ Guenther Steiner says.
Binotti adds: “I saw Toto reacting in a very emotional way. Maybe he was under pressure for their performance at the time? Maybe he was under pressure because he promised something to someone? I don’t know. But I believe that as team principals, we always have to stay rational. Surprising, I didn’t expect it from him.”
As he walked out of the meeting, Horner summed up the outburst with two words “f***ing unbelievable” before diving into it further in front of the cameras.
“He got himself pretty wound up. It’s a horrible feeling when you’re just part of the scenery, you’re not competing and that takes an adjustment and that can cause self doubt and it can create a whole bunch of emotions that haven’t been there, haven’t been prevalent. You start to see cracks.”
Mercedes managed to rectify their porpoising issues in the second half of the season and showed they’re still a force to be reckoned with on the grid.
As the new season draws closer, all eyes will be on Mercedes to take the fight up to Red Bull. Even more eyes will also be keeping an eye on the frosty battle between Wolff and Horner.
