FIA in shock rule change that could make Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes even worse

In a move that threatens to make a struggling Lewis Hamilton even less competitive, the FIA is to compel teams to reduce “porpoising” – the violent up-and-down motion to which many of this season’s cars are prone – on safety grounds.

Just four days after Hamilton needed to be helped out of his Mercedes with back pain caused by the issue, the global governing body has decided to impose a strict limit on “vertical oscillations”, warning that any teams who exceed it face being penalised.

Except far from helping the seven-time world champion, this ruling is only likely to disadvantage him further. While Mercedes had sought an edict that all cars needed to be raised further from the ground to protect drivers’ backs, this technical directive will most severely affect those teams who are experiencing the greatest problems with porpoising.

Nobody is suffering more on this front than Hamilton, whose car was described by team principal Toto Wolff last weekend as a “s---box”. For Mercedes, who have won the constructors’ championship eight years in succession, their only solution to comply with the FIA’s diktat is to increase the ride height, a response almost certain to make Hamilton and George Russell go slower.

Hamilton, who has dismissed his own prospects of the title this year, already trails Max Verstappen by 88 points after eight of 22 races. While Mercedes have looked in recent races to run their cars lower to the track for maximum speed, they now risk being leapfrogged in F1’s midfield by Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo, who have shown less conspicuous porpoising issues.

Red Bull, having had no such difficulties at all, stand to gain from the FIA’s decision. While they already have the edge in reliability over Ferrari and Mercedes, they are now poised to gain an extra edge in raw pace, too, even though Christian Horner had strongly objected to the prospect of the rules being tweaked midway through the campaign. The alarm over safety, he insisted, was “only affecting isolated people or teams”.

The title leaders received no advance warning of the move. Horner, who was in the air en route to this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix when the FIA’s statement was released, had argued fiercely that his team – whose cars have shown the least susceptibility to porpoising – should not be punished simply for interpreting the rules better than their rivals.