If you head to all the discotheques, skate parks or amusement arcades, all the kids are
saying one thing: “Get rid of DRS”. And I get it. I’ve heard all the arguments:
It’s artificial. It’s not real racing. It discouraged actual overtaking because it
makes it tactically smarter to wait for the DRS zone than make a riskier move anywhere
else These are all perfectly valid points to be
honest. Ideally, we’d want F1 to be in a position
where cars of similar calibre can overtake naturally, without assistance. Where they
can get nose to tail through corners, fight side by side; pass, re-pass and defend fair
and square for lap after lap. That’s the dream.
But I’m going to argue that DRS is the best we have for now.
The difficulty is: we have a bit of a dirty air problem that we’re still waiting to
resolve. And if we just remove DRS now with no plan
to resolve the issues with dirty air then we will likely be left with almost no racing
at all. Let’s go back a quick step and remind ourselves
of what DRS actually sets out to do. While DRS is only activated on the straights,
it’s really the corners that are the problem, here.
See, the aerodynamic components of F1 cars prefer nice, smooth air to maximise the downforce
and aero balance they were designed to generate. Downforce and Aero Balance are key to cares
being able to maximise their speed through fast corners.
If an F1 car is traveling through the kind of disturbed, dirty air we see coming off
the back of other F1 cars then the downforce off the wings and bodywork is reduced and
unpredictable. Most of the airflow down the car is controlled
by the front wing and bargeboard elements. If these parts don’t have clean air to work
with then the airflow down the whole of the car is affected
This means that a car in dirty air cannot travel as quickly through the corners as it
is ideally capable of, instead suffering from understeer, oversteer or a general lack of
aerodynamic grip. In a racing situation, what this means is
- if we imagine two cars nose-to-tail - when they pass through a corner, the leading car
- in clean air - has decent downforce and can attack the corner at maximum capability.
The following car - in the dirty air - will suffer through the corner and lose time to
the car ahead. This following car will tend to lose so much
time and exit speed in struggling through the corners that by the time it gets to a
straight - normally the best chance to take advantage of a slip stream and overtake - that
it’s already too slow and too far behind to get close enough to make a move.
The time loss and exit speed loss is a real double whammy - and that’s before we even
consider the dirty air effect on engine and tyre cooling.
So, DRS exists to undo the disadvantage caused by dirty air, giving the chasing car the ability
to claw back time lost through the preceding corners.“
It’s not technically supposed to be this mega advantage to the car behind or even a
push-to-pass system. Rather, it was supposed to be a way to address the balance.
Now, granted - this isn’t always the way it’s worked out. Calibrating DRS zones is
something of a fine art but that’s a different, more subtle argument.
Nonetheless, the principle behind DRS has been to give a chasing car a fighting chance.
This year, the cars’ front wings and forward aerodynamic components have been restricted
to calm a lot of the dirty air generated by the extreme vortices coming off the increasingly
complex aero parts of latter years. DRS has also been given a big boost by increasing
the size of the rear wing and increasing the gap opened by the DRS - this means the drag
difference between an open and closed rear wing is much, much bigger than in previous
years. Having a much bigger DRS effect should mean
we can significantly shorten the DRS zones - maybe we can even move them away from the
braking zone as I’ll touch on at the end of this video.
We’ll see if any of this is explored as the FIA continue play with DRA zones through
2019. So back to my initial premise: I reckong DRS
is still the best solution we have until we sort out this dirty problem. And solving the
issue of dirty air is not a simple one. F1 is not a spec series. This means teams
can - within the parameters of the rules and regulations - develop their cars as much as
they want to exploit the limits of known engineering. Unfortunately, F1 engineers have figured out
that the best way to control airflow around their cars it to generate these huge, disturbing
vortices right down the car that end up absolutely wrecking all of the air behind the car. This
is the majority of the ‘dirty air’ everyone’s talking about.
So until rules are made that control this area of development (an extreme version might
be to hand out standardised front wings and ban bargeboards; a clever version might be
a stronger variation of the 2019 rules that strictly control the allowed shapes of wing
elements) - until these rules are put in place, we have a problem and that problem is currently
best mitigated by something like DRS that gives a chasing car a little boost to undo
all the time lost through no fault of their own.
Now I’d briefly like to address a couple fo popular suggestions I hear a lot from fans
(other than to throw DRS in the bin completely, which I think I’ve already covered).
One fairly common idea I hear is to keep DRS but allow all the drivers to use it at any
time. That way the chasing car doesn’t get this “artificial advantage” that seems
ridiculous and unfair. Ignoring some of the safety issues with that
(there are some corners that could benefit from DRS being permanently deactivated through
- Monaco’s Tunnel and Suzuka’s 130R come to mind), this idea - though fun in theory
- very much defeats the purpose of DRS. DRS’s only function is to specifically add
a temporary advantage to the chasing car to undo the advantage gained by the leading car.
If both cars can use DRS then we’re back to square one and the chasing car can’t
gain back any ground. This is no different, really, than getting rid of DRS altogether,
other than adding an extra component to navigating a track as fast as possible.
It actually sounds quite fun but would only really work once we solve the dirty air problem.
Moveable aerodynamics could be a fun addition to racing.
Another idea I’ve seen knocking about is allowing all cars to use DRS at any point
- but only allowing DRS to be open for a limited amount per laps. 10 to 20 seconds or something.
This also sounds good in theory - there’s an idea here about having to be tactical about
how you use your advantage. It’s pretty similar to the first generation of KERS where
the electric motor could be used at any point to give yourself a power boost, but the energy
deployed was limited per lap In reality, though, it wouldn’t be much
different to the ‘Unrestricted DRS at any time’ idea as you’d really only every
use DRS on the straights so drivers would often be deploying DRS at similar times anyway,
especially once optimum strategies have been calculated. This results in another stalemate.
Personally, in the meantime, I’m all for shortening DRS zones now that DRS is more
potent and - where possible - moving DRS zones away from the braking zone. Place them instead
towards the start of the long straights and have an automatic deactivation point.
This way, the chasing car can redress the balance early on in the straight, then the
DRS deactivates and the two cars can run on equal footing, fair and square, to the next
corner. Hopefully, the actual overtaking part will
feel much more like an overtake as the chasing car can’t carry its overspeed all the way
into the braking zone. Now I’m all for getting rid of DRS. But
only when the time is right. Here’s hoping Ross Brawn and his team nail
those 2021v regulations and we can finally get rid of it without getting rid of close
racing altogether.