FIA secretly renounce the TD39

It appears that ahead of the 2023 season, the technical directive was scrapped. The FIA are yet to publicly announce its removal, but it appears to have been secretly removed.

The TD39 was introducing during the midst of the 2022 season to help prevent extreme porpoising, after Mercedes complained about issues that proposing posed as a danger to their drivers. Serious concerns with the porpoising was seen at the 2022 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, where Lewis Hamilton struggled to get out of his car at the end of the race, leaving Mercedes with concerns to whether Hamilton would be fit to race at the next race in Montreal.

Rules around the TD39 were relaxed ahead of the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix, as the FIA decided the track surface was a key factor for the cars bouncing, as seen with Mercedes that struggled on rougher track surfaces such as Baku but performed better at tracks like Barcelona.

2023 brought new floor regulations, created with the intentions of preventing the issue of the bouncing. The new regulations consisted of a 15mm minimum height ride, to help combat the oscillation of the cars on the straights.

(image credit: motorsport.com, https://www.motorsport.com/f1/photos/?p=6# )

The new regulations appear to be working, with porpoising not being a large issue for most teams during the first two races of this season, however, Ferrari’s SF-23 still shows concerns with porpoising with various set ups.

Whether the new rules are fully effective is yet to be decided as the track surface in Bahrain and Jeddah differ from the track surface of other circuits, such as Azerbaijan and Montreal.