NOVEMBER 29, 2025

Drivers count down sessions as ground-effect era ends

The current 2022-25 ground-effect generation is almost over - and the drivers can't wait.

Max Verstappen may have dominated the era, but he's among the most relieved to see it gone. It has not been comfortable at all in recent years, he told Dutch media.

My back falls off and my feet actually hurt constantly. Physically, this has not been nice. If you do scans, they don't look good either.

He added that he'd gladly return to the pre-2022 style of F1.

We know what the situation was like and what the situation can be like, so I would rather go for what we had in 2015 and 2016, said the quadruple world champion.

FIA single-seater chief Nikolas Tombazis admitted the extreme stiffness of the current cars had not been foreseen.

The biggest problem is that the cars are adjusted very low and are also very stiff, he said.

This is something we generally had not anticipated in this generation of cars. We expect the cars to be tuned a little softer to get more mechanical grip.

Mercedes' George Russell revealed just how brutal the cars had become - to the point that the team banned its own designers from trying the simulator replay mode.

We wanted to put one of our designers in the cockpit so they could understand what it was like in Baku, he said. "But health and safety said it was too dangerous.

We'd been driving for an hour and a half shaking all over. I couldn't even see the braking boards in Vegas.

Half the grid reported similar issues.

Lewis Hamilton has long complained of back pain and didn't hide his relief that the current era is now ending. Yeah, I think we're all excited to see the back end of these ones for sure, he said.

Williams' Carlos Sainz agreed: It's not in my nature to drive these cars the way I have to drive them. I had to relearn skills I never thought I'd need. I'm glad it's over.

(GMM)