Red Bull adviser Dr Helmut Marko is not impressed with the changes made by the FIA to try to clamp down on “porpoising” and bouncing.
Mercedes’ George Russell and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz have been vocal in recent months over the potential health risks attached to the “porpoising” phenomenon that arrived with the new ground effect aerodynamics under the new technical regulations.
Russell and team-mate Sir Lewis Hamilton both struggled physically in Baku last weekend as the Mercedes cars bottomed out on the straights, and the governing body have taken action ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix.
READ: Russell insists the FIA aren’t trying to help Mercedes
They will use this weekend to measure the oscillation of the cars, and they will then use that information to set a limit at future races for the amount of movement that will be permitted at future races.
Should any teams exceed this, they could face disqualification from the event, but the first request from the FIA will be to ask that team to raise their ride height by a minimum of 10 millimetres.
Because the directive was brought in at such short notice before this weekend, the teams are also allowed to put an additional stay on the floors of the cars to keep them stable, so the change of regulation threatened the advantage Red Bull and Ferrari have over the rest.
After Red Bull essentially did the best job of dealing with the new regulations, Dr Marko is livid that the FIA are changing the rules to help another team because they did not.
“That’s complete nonsense!” he told Kleine Zeitung in Austria.
“Just because a team can’t cope with the changes doesn’t mean you change the regulations.”
One of the ways to limit the bouncing is to raise the ride height of the cars, but the Austrian indicates that Mercedes do not want to do this for performance reasons, so are instead trying to gain an advantage through the regulations.
“You can easily raise the car, then that’s done,” said Dr Marko.
Russell pointed out ahead of the weekend that the changes have been made with safety in mind, and that the German outfit were not trying to gain an advantage by pushing for a change to the regulations.
“I think this is something that everybody thinks Mercedes were sort of pushing for,” he told Sky Sports.
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“But from a pure performance side of things, we don’t really want change because if there’s change, you never know if it’s going to go in our favour or against you.
“I think it’s something that we as drivers have spoken about globally because we want change moving forward because what we went through last weekend just wasn’t sustainable.
“It doesn’t matter what boat you’re in, you’re either ‘porpoising’ and you’re hitting the ground, or you have no ‘porpoising’ so you’re running the car very close to the ground and you’re bottoming.
“So, either way you look at it, it’s not great.
“I think it’s promising to see that they’ve made action on this straight away and it’s not taken them weeks and months and political decisions to change something like this.
“And when it comes to safety, things need to be resolved ASAP so not surprised to see it come in so quick but I think it’s good for everyone.”
The extra stays that Mercedes gave Russell and Hamilton during Friday practice in Montreal did little to improve the stability of the car, and the seven-time champion described it as “undriveable.”