porpoising meaning

In motorsport, “porpoising” is the rapid up-and-down bouncing that strikes ground-effect cars when the airflow under the floor repeatedly stalls and reattaches.

As speed climbs, the floor sucks the car down, the gap closes, the flow stalls, downforce falls off a cliff, the car pops up, flow reattaches—and the whole sorry dance repeats.

The effect hammers ride comfort, robs grip on straights, and makes drivers feel like they’re auditioning for a pogo-stick championship.

Teams fight it with higher ride heights, stiffer floors, tweaked diffuser edges, and suspension changes, usually sacrificing a smidge of lap time for sanity.

It made headlines with the 2022 ground-effect F1 regs, but the physics has been around longer than your dad’s torque wrench.