For those who weren’t around back then: The 2009 aero regs introduced multi-element front wings. These new wings allowed for significantly more downforce allowing for cars to handle more power before losing grip. However, when an attacker got within a second or two of someone they’d start to lose all that new grip and power due to dirty air. This was a tremendous disadvantage to an attacker to the point where faster (on paper) cars would just get stuck behind slower ones.
Two years later in 2011, DRS was introduced to “promote passing”. It didn’t directly reduce the dirty air, but it gave enough of an advantage to an attacker to offset the disadvantage of dirty air. This was pretty controversial initially with some calling it “push to pass”, but over time we have mostly either become used to it or it is the only thing we’ve known.
The new 2021 aero regulations have been very successful in cleaning up dirty air. The disadvantage to attacking has been significantly reduced as they can get much closer before losing all that grip. Rather than reduce the advantage of DRS to compensate, the FIA has been adding in additional DRS zones. They have now reduced the advantage to slower cars, while simultaneously increasing the advantage to faster cars. This is just exacerbating the already existing performance gaps between teams and I’m pretty sure we all want the grid to be more competitive.
In my opinion, this is causing the grid to spread out and settle into position too early on into races. The remainder/end of races are fairly boring unless something chaotic happens like weather or a safety car. Desert race with long straights? :yawn: DRS was a quick and easy solution, but I think the FIA should be reducing DRS zones at a minimum, if not just remove DRS all-together.
tldr; DRS was a bandaid. The FIA should also reduce/remove the bandaid now that they’ve reduced dirty air.
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The existance of so called DRS trains would suggest that without DRS it would not be possible for cars to pass easily. We would go back to races where we’d only see maybe three passes in a whole race. Even super fast cars like the current Red Bull could get stuck behind cars that are 1 sec per lap slower, like the current Ferrari. Races would become boring and meaningless, with the only difference between the quali result and the race result being people who were way out of position, better strategy (pitstop passes) and crashes/reliability.
F1 nearly died with super boring races and dwindling viewers. Yes DRS is bullshit artificial nonsense and doesn’t seem like it’s fair from a sporting standpoint. But it saved F1.
Also the problem of dirty air goes back a whole lot further than 2009. We all remember the infamous Trulli trains. Jarno Trulli would qualify something like 4th or 5th with a slower car. Kinda like Hulk does this season. Then there would be a whole train going back to at least 10th place which would be unable to pass him, even though Trulli would lose at least 1 sec per lap on the cars in front of him.
With aero dominated cars, this is a fact of life. Even without the aero aspect, overtaking means going off line, which reduces grip not only when off line but for the next couple of corners as well. So you need a pretty big speed differential to do it. With a competitive grid, these speed differentials might not exist, with boring races as a result.
Also it isn’t like the whole thing isn’t already full of artificial rules and techniques to make the racing more entertaining.
F1 is entertainment first and a sport second, they want to put on a good show.
The “entertainment first sport second” thing I find myself struggling with a little bit. On the one hand I want it to be a “fair” sport. On the other hand, I’m ultimately watching it for entertainment so I want a good show. If I’m being honest with myself, I’d probably stop watching if there was only one or two passes per race.
I don’t think the dirty air issue is solved as much as you think it is. It looks better than it used to, but you can see in situations where drs is disabled that following close is still pretty difficult unless you’re Max Verstappen.
The FIA are finding it really difficult to tune the drs zones though. Passing either seems guaranteed or impossible most of the time, haven’t seen much happy middle ground. Maybe they could invest in some better simulation software to make their guesses better.
There have been other proposals to allow each driver a limited number of DRS uses per race. The driver can choose to use it wherever they please, in attack or defense, but after x times used it is unavailable for the rest of the race.
Coupled with a penalty increasing the higher up you qualify, I think it would be great to level things out a bit.
Have DRS for the sprint races for people who want quick action packed gimmicky bullshittery, then for the full grand prix allow strategy to play out with tire deg and compound choices to give whatever “boost” needed to get past.
Weakens the undercut and multistop strategies that rely on overtaking, reducing strategic variation. Everyone will just run medium-hard.
Imo keep it but make the zones shorter
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In principal I agree with your point, but I’m sceptical, it will work the way we wish, since there are more things connected to that, when it comes to car design and setup.
First off: The 2023 cars cause more dirty air than the 2022 runners. And I do remember a few races at the beginning of 2023 where this was clearly visible. The FIA tried adding more DRS zones to remedy this, but it’s way imbalanced. At some places it doesn’t make any difference, in others it’s just “Push to Pass”, which as a motorsports fan is frustrating.
But it must be even more frustrating for the teams. The designs and setups for their cars are always trade-offs and since DRS is part of the formula, it is part of the trade-off (Look at what McLaren was trying to do in Spa, or back in F-Duct days in Monza). Before I write a whole essay on it, let me showcase one of the dependencies: Powertrains and gearboxes are fixed until 2025. If you’d get rid of DRS in say 2024, those who made the trade-off to favor traction over high-speed will suffer and will only be able to pass if they sacrifice their Aero downforce. Or they’ll keep their grip levels and just not be able to pass on track without a huge tire delta. In other words: DRS gives the designers one more degree of freedom to arrive at their concept. Without it, I fear that car concepts will merge even more, than they do now, giving aero even more of a weight and due to even less difference, racing itself might suffer. This is only one example and holds true even when changing it at the same time as the drivetrain. So it’s a pretty delicate thing to balance, when taking away just one aspect.
Not unless the go formula-e route, with minimum downfource and minimum dirty air.
With the way the cars are now experiencing more turbulence again after the rule change for the floor height as a result of last year, I am of the opinion that it should stay.
If the cars were actually able to follow close without losing significant downforce I’d say getting rid of it or shortening the zones would be a good step. That way you can force the action to happen nearer to the corners or even in the corner rather than on the straight.
But at the moment we have a lot of action on track even with the drs train issue.
