Overplaying them? Absolutely not.
But letting the drivers suffer when the solution to porpoising is common knowledge just to not lose any more performance? Yes.
Maybe even applying some media pressure to get the FIA to have a minimal ride height to gain net performance? Perhaps.
But suggesting they’re overplaying serious pain is disgusting. As disgusting as Merc letting their drivers go through it when the solution is at hand. This is far beyond what a competition and having a performance advantage should look like, this is messing with peoples health. If McLaren or Red Bull were the ones letting their drivers drive like that, the community would be up in arms. Again, I love Merc, but I don't know why we're letting it fly that this team is risking serious injuries on two young men only to gain a competitive advantage, refusing to raise the ride height, and then complaining to the governing body of the sport to get a rule change that would benefit them and no one else. And Horner can kindly shut his mouth after asking the same governing body to raise the minimum weight of the cars only because they were massively overweight with their own car.
I agree that the teams should do something to reduce the porpoising but the drivers can also be really stubborns, this is what Pierre said after last race:
"It's not healthy, that's for sure," Gasly said. "I've had a physio session before and after every session, just because my [spinal] discs are suffering from it. You have literally no suspension. It just hits going through your spine.
The team is asking me, 'OK, we can compromise the setup?' and
I'm compromising my health for the performance. And I'll always do it, because I'm a driver and I always go for the fastest car I can. But I don't think FIA should put us in a corner where you got to deal between health and performance."
I think the FIA should do something because both teams and drivers won't do anything to gain some tenths unless something really bad happen. I see some people suggesting that the FIA should set a maximum vertical G forces that the driver could endure or a maximum frequency/height change and i find these ideas interesting because it won't disadvantage the teams that did a good job but will also forced the ones that suffer from it to raise the car ride. I don't know if it is easily feasible but that could be the start of an idea.
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