I actually talked to Willem a while ago about that exactly. The F310 and its reactions and the drivers were actually in the context of which he wrote that, if memory serves. The designer John Barnard was the only F1 designer who started with a clean sheet of paper for almost every new car. Barnard also did with that car. JB (or Tony- JBs aero guy) had this idea that they would eliminate the boundary layer that puts low energy air into the side pods by separating them from the car. Problem is that the front wheel wake went straight in instead. Really daft idea. That though was not the main problem the car had if you consider it a problem.The car also had a vertical separation to the side pod and a (relatively) sharp leading edge to the flat floor (step plane) of the car. It would behave differently in braking and acceleration especially on a bumpy track in the braking zones. If the front of the floor vibrated due to bumpy track, the air going under would stall in waves. For Michael it wasn't a drama - he drove so precisely, he could predict what the car's behaviour would be. For Eddy Irvine though, it was a very hard car to drive because of that. Why? In heavy braking the floor was likely to have the waves of stalling under it. So in heavy braking towards turn in the car was likely to snap into oversteer - a disaster for a driver because he has to react or the car would be spinning. Irvine drove with flair and was very fast - as fast as Michael and sometimes faster - but his style was less precise. He would not drive each corner the same each lap and the changes were sometimes "dramatic" (although to engineers, the car's behaviour was predictable). If he hit the brakes early and then rolled off the brakes before turning in the car would understeer, if he hit the brakes a bit late and was still hard on them during the turn in phase, then it would sometimes snap with oversteer.Hoffman900 wrote: ↑25 May 2023, 22:24
This.
Aero pitch sensitivity, especially at braking has been known for 45 years now and is a big reason why active suspension (with Lotus) was even tried.
There is even a good story about by Willem Toet how Michael Schumacher was less sensitive to aero pitch induced instabilities at the braking point where Eddie Irvine was. Fixing it, Eddie Irvine found tenths where Michael just found it to take less thought.
Everyone acting like this is new when I can open a Carroll Smith book up and read about anti-dive suspensions from the 1970s.
It’s like the phrase of the week (until someone in the media learns another old term they didn’t know existed).
Willem fixed the problem with some careful reading of the radius rules and using some manufacturing tolerance. Michael said something like "Very nice Willem, it's easier to drive like that. But. It isn't faster, I'd like more downforce". He drove with extreme precision and his experiments lap on lap were very small steps in his behavior. Eddie loved the change and was more consistent and much faster in races as a result.
But anyway - you are absolutely right - pitch sensitivity has been known for ages. So simply adding an anti-dive suspension to the car is hardly the big trick or something new. And if you don't consider and adjust a lot of other things here, you can also have a negative effect very quickly.