FIA's honest assessment of F1's past rule cycle: “We have missed that”
by Ronald Vording · AutosportNikolas Tombazis admits the FIA underestimated how crucial ride height would be in F1's past cycle. He does not expect a repeat of porpoising in 2026
With the 2025 calendar year, the ground effect era has also come to an end in Formula 1. The FIA previously indicated that things moved “in the right direction”, but the governing body does not give itself full marks in all areas. That applies first and foremost to the effect of dirty air, which has become a bigger problem again over the past two seasons.
Extremely low ride heights a ‘miss’ in the regulations
Another issue was that this generation of cars turned out to be extremely sensitive to ride height. To extract maximum performance, teams had to run very low and stiff.
In 2022, porpoising proved to be a major headache, but even after that the discomfort never fully disappeared. Several drivers complained about physical issues, as Max Verstappen remarked in Las Vegas that at times “my whole back is falling apart”.
Reflecting on the past rule cycle, single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis acknowledged that the importance of ride height was underestimated by the FIA.
“The fact that the optimum [ride height] of the cars moved so much lower was a miss in the 2022 regulations," Tombazis told a select group of media, including Autosport.
"It's something that we missed — and not only us but also the teams. In all discussions, nobody raised that issue. It was something that became obvious very, very close to the start of the championship, when it was too late to change the regulations.
“The initial porpoising, which hasn't totally disappeared but has obviously improved massively, was also something that had not been anticipated. I wish we had done better there."
However, the FIA rejected the suggestion that these ride height issues could have been solved if it had given teams less freedom with the suspension.
“We don't believe that suspension changes would have had a first-order effect," he said. "It would perhaps have given them a [different] set of options, but we don't think the simplification of the suspension rules would have had a first-order effect.”
DSQ due to plank wear: Could it have been handled differently?
Teams going to the extremes with ride height had another knock-on effect: more focus on the plank and skid wear. Over the past cycle this has repeatedly been under the spotlights, for example during the 2023 US Grand Prix and more recently with McLaren in Las Vegas.
In all cases, checking the plank turned out to be a time-consuming task, which is why not every car has been inspected after every grand prix. The checks were made even more complex by the fact that different teams used slightly different solutions for the floor and skid blocks. It raises the question whether further standardisation would have made life easier for the FIA, although Tombazis believes that's too simplistic.
“Please don't take this single phrase without my complete thought, but all of these problems would go away the more we go towards a standard car. You can easily have a Formula 2 car with a bit more performance, and then you don't have porpoising, you don't have any loopholes, and you don't have any plank issues.
“You can solve all of these things with more prescription. But clearly, we want Formula 1 to be a technological battle as well. We don't want it to be a single car with different stickers on it. And therefore we do leave some leeway to the designers.
“Specifically for the plank, there was an additional factor as well. Different teams had different ways to deal with the reliability concerns of cars banging on the road all the time. To say, this is your design and it’s rock solid, then some teams would have said, 'well, but you can't do that because if our engine takes a hit there, it's going to break'. You have the ERS systems and so on, so you have to consider various other issues before you introduce a standard system of some sort.”
No porpoising issues in 2026?
Next season, ride height and plank wear should be less of a factor. The 2026 regulations still feature a degree of ground effect, but far less than between 2022 and 2025 due to the simpler floor. The FIA believes this will push the optimal ride height higher and, in theory, should prevent a repeat of the porpoising problems.
“We believe it is very unlikely to have similar characteristics because of a much flatter floor," said Tombazis. "How much the downforce increases as you go lower is not as pronounced with this car as it was in last year's car. We believe that will reduce the chance of porpoising.”
That said, the FIA doesn’t want to sound too confident before cars hit the track, given the unforeseen side effects in recent years.
“When the cars run for the very first time and have some issue, I wouldn't exclude it. But I would say that the rules are inherently less in that direction. So given the teams did a pretty good job of solving the issue with the previous generation of cars, it should be a much easier problem next time.”
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- The Autosport.com Team