FIA won't mandate higher ride heights in Formula One

A series of crashes in the latter phase of the season resulted from bumps on the tracks, but the FIA are hesitant to enforce a ride-height increase.

Incidents involving Lando Norris at the Las Vegas Grand Prix and Carlos Sainz during Abu Dhabi GP practice highlighted the vulnerability of the current generation of ground-effect Formula 1 cars to track imperfections. 

These cars are particularly sensitive to bumps due to their enhanced performance when running very close to the ground and being equipped with stiff suspensions.

Although the accidents involving Norris and Sainz raised concerns by running their cars as low as possible, the FIA does not perceive the situation as troublesome enough to warrant intervention on safety grounds.

Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA's head of single-seater matters, acknowledged that it would be preferable for cars to run higher. 

However, he emphasised that there are limits to when the governing body should interfere with performance matters, striking a balance between safety considerations and allowing teams to explore the technical aspects of their setups.

"Well, we do need to make sure circuits, generally speaking, avoid features which may cause that," said Tombazis.

"It's a thin line between if maybe there is the possibility for the circuit to sort out some features in detail, and where the teams may just need to raise the car a bit more.

"We obviously will try to fix these areas of the circuits.

"Are the cars too low? Yes, we would rather they were running a bit higher.

"But the inherent characteristic of a ground effect car is that it tends to have more performance running low. So that's something that I don't think we can easily avoid."

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