Rule change "disappointing", says Verstappen

17/06/2022
NEWS STORY

World champion, Max Verstappen has admitted to being disappointed at the FIA's decision to change the rules mid-season in a bid to alleviate the porpoising phenomenon.

Yesterday, following the scenes in Baku, where Lewis Hamilton struggled to extricate himself from his car at race end having taken a pounding over the course of the afternoon, and which led to Toto Wolff suggesting that the Briton might miss this weekend's race, the FIA issued a technical directive aimed at reducing the problem.

Ahead of the race, Hamilton's teammate, George Russell, had led the calls for the FIA to get involved and change the rules, even though it subsequently emerged that a previous attempt to do just that was thwarted by the teams.

As a result, this weekend the FIA is seeking to end the issue once and for all, a move which many see as a move to help those who got it wrong originally and penalise those who got it right.

"I think it's a bit disappointing that again there is a rule change mid-season, says Max Verstappen, according to RACER. "It's not even about affecting us more or less than other teams, but it shouldn't be that one team is complaining a lot and suddenly then they change the regs around it.

"I think there are a lot of teams that actually did an amazing job to not have these kind of issues, so it is possible to drive around it," he adds.

"If you raise your car then you won't have these issues, but you lose performance. But if you can't design the car properly for that then that's your fault, it's not the regs fault. For me that is a bit of a shame."

Haas team boss, Guenther Steiner believes the move will impact the pecking order.

"Some of the cars are pretty bad," he admits. "But there is a solution, just raise the ride height. But then you go slow, and who wants to go slow?

"It's like, I don't know how many years ago, in the middle of the season when we had the change of tyres. It's something like this," said the Italian.

"You change something fundamentally, you could change the pecking order completely again. Is that really fair? No!

"The use of the safety factor," he continues, referring to the fact that mid-season rule changes can be pushed through if safety is in question, "but that could be approached too... if it is too dangerous, just raise your ride height.

"The measurement with this is to find where it is dangerous, find the limit of something, if you are above this threshold… I don't know what penalty you could give. It's pretty fresh, this thing."

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Published: 17/06/2022
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