DRS (Drag Reduction System, or a moveable rear wing to you and me) has been one of the most significant additions to Formula 1 this year, and much heralded in some circles as livening up ‘the show’. The device is also very much in the news at the moment, as debate rages between the teams and FIA as to whether use of DRS should be permitted at Monaco, the tightest and most dangerous track on the calendar. But the wider question is whether DRS should be used at all, and whether the potential benefits of the device match up to the reality.
In a nutshell, DRS is designed to reduce drag in a straight-line, allowing the car to travel faster, run closer to the car in front and therefore attempt a pass. The downside of this is that downforce at the rear of the car is lessened, which can cause reduced stability in corners and potentially an accident. In the race, the use of DRS is therefore governed by ‘DRS Zones’ placed on straights, where drivers have to be within a second of the car in front in order to use the system. However, in qualifying its use is unlimited, a curious anomaly given that DRS is meant to be an overtaking aid - if a driver is having to overtake several cars in qualifying then there’s something seriously wrong with their track positioning.
Surely disabling the system completely for qualifying would make more sense – it’s not like the old traction control argument (i.e. “it’s hard to detect so we might as well legalise it”) because a great big yawning gap appears in the rear wing of the car for the entire paddock to see. Adrian Sutil’s spin at the end of Q2 in Australia demonstrated the possible dangers of an itchy DRS trigger finger – imagine the carnage at Monaco should similar incidents occur. DRS could easily become dangerous in races as well; as Mark Webber’s crash in Valencia last year vividly illustrated, rapid closing speeds can result in extremely serious consequences.
Safety issues aside, many people (myself included) simply feel that DRS is too artificial, that Formula 1 does not need excessive amounts of overtaking and that a moveable rear wing, however effective, is simply a gimmick. A counter argument has been presented by BBC F1 commentator and 13 time Grand Prix winner David Coulthard, who claims DRS should simply be seen as another “tool of the trade”, something which is fundamentally part of the F1 car’s makeup.
Coulthard has also compared DRS to turbo boost settings which were available to drivers in the 1980s, an era when the majority of teams used 1.5 litre turbo engines before they were banned for the 1989 season. In my view, to compare DRS to using turbo boost is to misunderstand how boost was used. Drivers didn’t just drive along with their fingers nailed to the boost button in pre-determined ‘zones’ – if they had, their engines would have detonated in double-quick time, and they would never have finished the races in any case due to the amount of fuel that would have been used.
Fuel stops, like nowadays, weren’t allowed in the later turbo years, and teams were marginal on getting the thirsty turbos to the end as it was – in 1987, the Osella team never managed to finish a race due to their Alfa Romeo turbo engines using more fuel than the tanks could hold! Turning up the boost was something that was done strategically, and for strictly limited periods during the race. Conversely, the use of DRS comes without any penalty in terms of reliability, and there is no limit to the device so it can be used indiscriminately in a way that the turbo boost button never could.
Of course, F1 does now have its own equivalent of turbo boost – KERS. The ‘Kinetic Energy Recovery System’ gives a power boost of up to 80 horsepower to the engine for up to 6.7 seconds per lap, and can be used in both qualifying and the race (reliability permitting). The phrase “it has road car applications” has been trotted out on numerous occasions, but it does make more sense to your average man in the street than a flappy ‘letterbox’ rear wing.
The thing with KERS is that its use is strictly limited to those 6.7 seconds per lap, and it can be used at any point on the circuit. This creates strategy implications, in much the same way as turbo boost did – do you use all your KERS in one big lump on the main straight, or do you save it to use in smaller bursts, when coming out of a corner for example?
Critically, it also creates variety, with different cars using KERS at different points on the lap. DRS doesn’t involve as much strategy - if you are within one second of the car in front going into the DRS zone, you will inevitably use it even if you don’t intend make a pass, due to the advantage in terms of straight line speed gained (and lack of any disincentive).
This results in situations like in the early laps of the Spanish Grand Prix, where a tight gaggle of cars were all within a second of each other, all using DRS, and therefore all failing to make an overtaking manoeuvre. Variation, whether in strategies, fuel loads, tyre wear or simply latent car performance, is what allows one car to lap significantly faster than another, and therefore close in and create an overtaking opportunity. Okay, so DRS does work better when only one car is following another, but even so the effectiveness of the system varies wildly from circuit to circuit. In Australia for example, it appeared to make little difference unless there was already a significant speed differential between the cars.
Therein lies another problem; DRS seems to give drivers in good cars who have messed up qualifying or made mistakes in races (e.g. Jenson Button in Australia, Mark Webber in China) too easy a chance to recover after making mistakes. Even Webber himself acknowledged this after his admittedly great drive in Shanghai, commenting that “the precision has gone out of overtaking”, other drivers “have nothing to fight back with” and that “the racing is a lot less”.
Because of this DRS is almost a safety net, in the same way that a concrete run-off allows drivers to recover after a spin more easily than a gravel trap, for instance. Drivers who make mistakes or bad strategy calls should surely be made to suffer to some degree for their mistakes – if that means spending 20 laps stuck behind a slower car, then so be it. This is the crux of the problem for me – not only does DRS reward drivers in fast cars who have done a bad job (so that they suffer no consequence for errors), but it also does this without any penalty in terms of reliability, and there is no limit to the device so it can be used indiscriminately, which in turn can reduce overtaking opportunities when all competitors are using DRS together.
Despite all that, I would still propose that DRS is retained for the time being. It seems to have added a fair amount of excitement (and confusion) to some races, although the impact of the higher wear rate of the Pirelli tyres has had a far greater impact. In fact, without the increased tyre wear that Pirelli have introduced, the effectiveness of DRS would arguably be even less, as the increased number of pit stops means that cards are more often running out of position, and therefore able to close on other cars and use DRS (again, variation in strategies is key).
I would propose, therefore, that the use of DRS is limited in some way, for example to five separate uses in a race, to reduce the reliance on it and increase the prospect that different drivers will use the device at different times. For safety reasons the DRS Zone should probably be retained, and DRS banned completely in qualifying. By limiting DRS use further, it can become the overtaking aid it was planned to be, rather than the dominant, unlimited use, magic instant overtaking button that it has become.
