F1 2021 concept rear wing

Poll: Should Formula 1 scrap DRS in 2021?

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By the time Formula 1’s new car regulations arrive in 2021, the Drag Reduction System will have been part of the sport for 10 years.

The adjustable rear wing was originally introduced in 2011 as a means of helping cars get closer to each other in order to overtake. It has divided opinion between those who consider it a unfair gimmick, and those who believe overtaking would be almost impossible without it.

DRS has been described as a sticking plaster solution to the difficulty of overtaking in F1. As the new 2021 regulations are intended to make it much easier for cars to follow each other closely, will that be the time to ‘rip off the Band Aid’?

For

F1 believes its 2021 car designs will allow drivers to race each other much more closely. The changes are much more drastic than the alterations to front wings made this year.

Currently a car running two car-lengths behind another loses around 50% of its downforce, which is why drivers find it so hard to stay close. This figure is expected to fall to 5-10% in 2021.

This is the very problem DRS is designed to mitigate. It shouldn’t be needed any more in two years’ time, so why keep it on the cars?

Against

Past attempts to improve the quality of racing in Formula 1 have not always been successful. The 2009 Overtaking Working Group-inspired changes made some gains, but these were cancelled out as teams developed their designs in pursuit of performance. The same situation could happen again in 2021.

DRS currently provides an easy means to adjust how closely cars can race each other. Leaving it on the car would allow F1 to ensure the racing remains close even if the 2021 regulations don’t produce the intended results.

I say

Toto Wolff once said he wanted to take a chainsaw to the Halo. That’s basically how I feel about DRS.

DRS is fundamentally unfair: it hands a significant advantage to a driver following another car closely. I wouldn’t have put it on the cars in the first place. Forget 2021, I’d take it off tomorrow.

Because DRS creates easy, push-button passing, it weakens the incentive to improve how closely cars can follow each other by other ways. The exhaustively-research 2021 proposal looks by far the best chance yet of fixing this problem properly. To give it its best chance of success, DRS has simply got to go.



You say

Do you think Formula 1 should scrap DRS in 2021? Cast your vote below and have your say in the comments.

Should Formula 1 get rid of DRS in 2021?

  • No opinion (0%)
  • Strongly disagree (12%)
  • Slightly disagree (10%)
  • Neither agree nor disagree (7%)
  • Slightly agree (17%)
  • Strongly agree (55%)

Total Voters: 343

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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125 comments on “Poll: Should Formula 1 scrap DRS in 2021?”

  1. I’m very much against DRS, that’s almost like its fixing the symptom instead of curing the problem.

    I’d be curious to hear the arguments of those (if any) in favour of DRS, just to get a sense of the other side of the aisle. Particularly when DRS zones have tended to increase in number and length in many cases (with few exceptions, of course).

    1. Check this video by Chain Bear F1, it is a good eloquent defense of DRS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fh2P_VztnU

      PS: I’m not particularly fond of DRS either

      1. A Chain Bear F1 video? Perfect. Thank you, Pedro.

      2. The link to that video should be in the post itself, as it completely addresses about 90% of the comments suggesting things like DRS on demand, etc. Thanks.

      3. That’s a very good video. Thanks for providing the link.

      4. Great video, spot on. The question with DRS is not whether we like to have it, but whether we can afford to lose it. And the answer, at least until 2021 is a clear no.

        Actually, I hope they keep it for 2021. We all hope that the new rules fix the overtaking problem, but nobody will know for sure until we get there. For that reason, keeping DRS in the regulations for 2021 would be very sensible. If it turns out that the new rules completely solve the problem, great, just remove the DRS zones from all the circuits and everybody will be happy. But if the new rules face teething problems, as they probably will (or, god forbid, they fail altogether) you still have DRS as a proven safety net to fallback to until the problem is fixed for good.

        1. Bang on

    2. I say keep it. But allow it anywhere on the racetrack, no more zones. And allow a fixed usage of it, e.g. 30s per race or something like that. Then its not predictable over where its used, and can be used for attack and defense. Remember Webber and Alonso through Eau Rouge in 2011? Id love to see that but see who had the courage to open DRS a second sooner to get that extra speed going over the hill.
      Modern hypercars have moveable wings, so the whole transferable technology argument works here too.

      1. @umartajuddin ”But allow it anywhere on the racetrack”
        – That indeed was the case with practice and qualifying sessions in the first two seasons of DRS, but was subsequently limited to the designated sections of track for all sessions on safety grounds and rightly so. DRS and high-speed corners simply don’t work well together.

        1. But I would see that rather then the 1 second rule. Just give the rider limited uses and it get more skilled base then a auto pass.

    3. I’d be curious to hear the arguments of those in favour of DRS

      Here I am, @phylyp!
      I’m in favour of keeping DRS.

      I would argue to keep DRS if:
      – we rename it Downforce Recovery System;
      – it is designed to increase the downforce of the following car in the curvy bits to just offset the dirty air impact (e.g. steeper front wing);
      – is allowed to be used by all drivers anywhere on track (only makes sense in the corners though) when within 2 seconds of the car in front.

      1. @coldfly Or, have Brawn study it as he has and simply get rid of the fake gadget all together by addressing their ridiculous decades long addiction to aero downforce such that a gadget that is a fake mask to try to somewhat repair the damage of dirty air, but harms the integrity of the sport all the while, is not needed.

        1. I don’t comprehend people who want to eliminate downforce.

          You almost never hear people calling for less grip or horsepower, but somehow, improving the way the car uses the air it passes through is evil.

          The problem is not downforce. The problem is unintended consequences. The reason downforce is such an issue for following cars in F1 is because of the incredibly draconian anti-ground effect rules that were written in response to ground effects getting out of control.

          Short-sighted solutions will always result in making the problem worse.

      2. @coldfly – your proposal makes sense, I wouldn’t mind giving it a shot. As some others below have mentioned, DRS – in either its current incarnation, or your proposal – might be more interesting to my eyes if its use is limited to an amount of time, or activation attempts.

      3. Pretty much clicked in here to say this. Re-name it to “active aero” or something and use it as a part of the racing, not as a band-aid for spec design deficiencies.

        At the very least, keep the components and let the stewards make the call to use it or not, in case the 2021 rules don’t have the effect that we hope they do in terms of following ability.

    4. Except, even if they remove DRS, they won’t cure the problem. They are concentrated on making cars to look cool for teens

    5. @phylyp

      I’d be curious to hear the arguments of those (if any) in favour of DRS,

      One reason to allow drs is to allow it for tracks which are otherwise never going to produce overtaking otherwise. Canada doesn’t need drs and neither does baku or spa. But then you have tracks like monaco and australia where it might be better to have it.

      1. @phylyp, We have to fix the tyre-wear problem at the same time or it will be just another failed idea, but maybe @coldfly has the solution given the current addiction to pit-stops.

      2. Monaco has a drs zone, and almost no passing. In spite of Keith’s unending crusade to convince people that DRS is a magic button that destroys racing, the truth is that we’ve had more passing with DRS and it’s godfather the F-duct, than we’ve had at in time in the past 30 years– and even so, there are races where the clearly faster car simply cannot get past the car in front of it.

        1. Number of passes doesn’t mean better races or better racing.

          A football match that is 15-0 isn’t a classic and that is what DRS gives us. A one sided match.

          Would much rather a competitive 0-0. For example Japan 2000 or Imola 06 & 06.

  2. Yes. Simple as that.

    If the cars are still unable to follow each other, I would much rather see Indycar style push-to-pass system: give each driver x uses to supermegaturboboost for the race, and let them use it however they want.

  3. I have always hated the DRS system but i think the only way it could be retained is for use in passing lapped cars.
    Get rid of the hated and unnecessary blue flags and let drivers only use DRS to lap cars. Drivers used to have to deal with traffic and i think we have lost a skillset that used to be part of the race. I’m not sure if anyone has put this forward before but for me its a perfect solution. Now discuss…………….:)

    1. @joolsy Without blue flags, things would get pretty ugly in the long-term, so not worth it.

    2. Doing away with blue flags is fine, if you’re willing to accept that the Haas is going to let the Ferrari breeze by and push the Merc off the track.

  4. If DRS is still on the cars in 2021 then it will be a clear sign to me that it’s time to walk away from F1.

    I hated the idea of DRS from the second it was announced but still tried to go into 2011 open minded about it. A few races in however it was clear to me it was working exactly how I feared it would & from then to now it’s played a huge part in my passion for F1 been slowly eroded away (The equally gimmicky high-deg tyres been another factor).

    I get why it’s in place & to a point I get why some are in favor of it, However for me the sort of racing/passing it tends to help produce I just don’t enjoy & it’s harmed my enjoyment of races far more than it’s helped. Watching a driver push a button & very easily breeze by half way down a straight isn’t enjoyable or exciting, I find that more boring than if there was no pass at all & every time I see DRS work in that way I just start to zone out of the race, It’s the polar opposite of the sort of racing I enjoy or want to see.

    1. The skill is in getting to be in a position where it can be used at all, because drivers need to fight the loss of down force due to dirty air as they get closer to the leading car.

    2. @stefmeister I could not agree with you more.

  5. If DRS is still there it means they failed.

    1. Not necessarily.

      Remember that Liberty setup multiple groups to assess the different ways in which to grow is business.

      What happens if market research finds that one of their core costumer niches really likes the thing?

      1. @faulty I’m pretty sure that all the polls taken on drs since it’s inception have shown that the majority do not like it.

        1. I’m pretty sure long-time viewers of the sport hate the thing since its inception. Newcomers, though?

          1. @faulty Newcomers are about to have a chance to see what real racing can be…real gadget-free driver vs driver battles and the thrill of the art of defending, not just the art of passing.

          2. @robbie

            Don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but have new fans seen “real racing” yet? The thing has been on F1 cars since 2011!

            How old were you when you started watching? Me, I was eight, imagine if by the time I was an attractive 20 year-old consumer, DRS had been a thing for 9 of those 12 years. Marketeers would have a hard time looking at data from that minority time period.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      18th August 2019, 14:40

      I agree – sums it up perfectly. If you come up with a whole new set of regs and still require a temporary solution that was applied to the previous set of regs to enable the cars to race, you can’t call it anything other than failure.

  6. It’s not just lapped traffic – – “designed to degrade” tires and mandatory pit stops intentionally put faster cars behind slower cars. DRS is currently the only mechanism to counteract F1’s other gimmick.

    Imagine Verstappen and Hamilton in an intense battle for the lead both drivers pit and come out behind Bottas. Team orders let Hamilton through, but Verstappen, without DRS, remains stuck behind Bottas for the remainder of the race despite being able to run 4 or 5 seconds a lap faster. Is that what we want?

    You can say “well get rid of both gimmicks”, but then we’re back to processional races 95% of the time. For whatever reason, people don’t like those.

    1. If he can run 5s/lap faster, he will come by – otherwise, Bottas will be kept as wingman ;).

    2. DRS is mainly there to counteract the huge amount of dirty air that comes out if lead cars which affect chasers a lot in terms of downforce loss.

      So really if by gimmick you mean aerodynamics, sure.

      1. Sure, but why does dirty air matter? If they line up in qualifying order, fastest to slowest, then passing should be rare and special anyway. The problem is that F1 wants lots of passing, and they’ve made tire rules to make sure that happens. At the same time, dirty air ensures that their manufacturered passing is needlessly difficult.

        DRS and gimmicks to shuffle the track order, like mandatory pit stops, go hand in hand. They’re designed to work together.

        1. @steronz, except the tyres amplify the dirty air effect, meaning more pitstops and less passing, but it is the close fought battle to pass that is exciting, not the high speed lunge on the straight to gain position for the corner.

    3. Yes that is what we whant. Racing with skill and not opening a flap and baaam you overtake. Rather see 5 laps with one dude trying to overtake being better. Not having drs is so much better. Then it comes to slipstream driver skill tricking the other driver to a mistake.. not press a button and you overtake.

  7. I’ve always hated it with a passion. Keith’s summary is perfect.

    If we really HAD to have something to aid overtaking I prefer KERS or some other “push to pass” solution, with a limit on usage over the full race distance. At least then a defending driver has the means to resist. If they’ve strategised correctly. DRS is complicated for new fans and unfair to leading drivers.

    Personally though I don’t think we should aid passing. If passing is hard then it’s hard. We should fix that, but properly. Not bodge it.

    1. DRS is not unfair to leading drivers because leading drivers slow down chasers by virtue of leading in the first place due to the huge amount of dirty air that comes out of their cars that prevent the cheers from coming close.

      The skill in DRS comes not from the actual overtaking but actually getting to the point in the first place because it is immensely difficult fighting the dirty air.

      To get to a point where DRS is not needed to counteract the dirty air issue chasers have to go through, you will need to severely neuter the aerodynamics.

      1. Yaru, yes severely neutering aero downforce is what they have talked about and what they should and will be doing. If it takes skill just to overcome the dependence one’s car has on clean air, then there is too much dirty air, and we know that to be the case. There is no fairness for the lead car as he is helpless to defend against the trailing car that suddenly has 15 or 20 kph at the end of the straight. There is not one drs pass in the last decade that has been memorable and is recalled and referenced by fans. DRS passes are instantly forgettable. Nor does anyone recall the effort a trailing car went through to follow a leading car. We call it a procession.

        1. There is a simple way to defend against DRS: stay within a second of the car in front.

      2. petebaldwin (@)
        18th August 2019, 14:48

        Yaru, you have just summed up the exact reason why I hate DRS.

        “The skill in DRS comes not from the actual overtaking but actually getting to the point in the first place because it is immensely difficult fighting the dirty air.”

        I don’t want to trade watching battles on track between two cars for watching a car squirm around in dirty air to get within a second of the one in front and then blasting past on the straight.

        2021 is a new set of regs and much more of the downforce is going to be generated by the floor. I’m far from an aero expert but I’m led to believe that dirty air is going to be less of a problem in 2021 and if that’s the case, it seems like the perfect time to get rid of DRS.

  8. I hate DRS in its current form and with its current objectives.

    However, I voted neither agree nor disagree. I actually believe it should be retained for 2021, but mostly as a belt-and-braces approach just in case the new regulations fail in their objectives. If, somehow, they fail to reduce the issue they are designed to resolve and DRS is removed, we could have vastly inferior racing in 2021. Therefore, just in case, keep it in the car design but have no DRS zones in the first couple of races. If the new regulations haven’t done their job, there will be data to analyse to find out why, but DRS zones could be added back as a short term fix. If the new regs work, just don’t have any DRS zones for the rest of the season and remove them in 2022.

    In addition, my main issue is not with DRS but with how it’s implemented. There would be no reason why you couldn’t open up the use of it, so DRS could be deployed in different situations. Maybe a limited number of uses or time of use. There is nothing wrong with the principal of allowing a driver to reduce the downforce and drag of his car, just with gifting that ability to the car behind to mitigate a serious issue with the sport.

    1. This is pretty much my stance: keep it on the cars as it can be tweaked on track – added, removed, shortened and lengthened to “re-power” it as appropriate. Then, if it proves unnecessary, remove the complexity from the cars in 2022/2023.

      1. @drmouse @simon-rolfe I’m quite sure they can’t just design wings and thus cars with drs in mind and then simply elect to not use drs. I think that would require quite another redesign to rid themselves of drs.

        No, rather, they will be designing cars (read they have designed the new concept cars) to make much less wake, generate more downforce from the floor, and be much less aero downforce dependent and thus less clean air dependent, so drs will be (I believe already has been) designed out of the 2021 cars.

        Put another way…if this was still the BE era and it was still the top 4 teams with the power, I’d be more concerned about 2021. But since this is now the Liberty/Brawn era and they have actually done unprecedented wind tunnel work separate from the teams, there is no doubt in my mind that drs is not even a thought with the totally new and unprecedented cars for 2021 and beyond.

        1. I’m quite sure they can’t just design wings and thus cars with drs in mind and then simply elect to not use drs.

          They could just make it ‘free for all’ to use anytime anywhere, @robbie.

          1. @coldfly But why have the integrity lost from the sport when rather they can and will have actual driver vs driver duels that don’t have the trailing one with a massive speed advantage making fake passes that are never memorable. Oh, unless you mean the leading driver can use it too, in which case why have it at all? Why not just do what Brawn and team have done with the concepts we have seen of the new gen cars? Why have a fake gadget at of all drivers can use it all the time? To make it a game of who timed their gadget use better then the other guy? No thanks.

        2. I’m quite sure they can’t just design wings and thus cars with drs in mind and then simply elect to not use drs

          I’m pretty sure they can, or at least close enough. Remember that they don’t use DRS for the vast majority of the time right now. Even so, it would be a call for the teams to make: do they design assuming the new regs fail, therefore making the best possible DRS wing, or do they design assuming the regs succeed, pretty much ignoring DRS? Most would go somewhere between the two, hedging their bets.

          If DRS is removed and the new regs fail to do what they intend (as has happened many times before), we would be left with cats which are still incredibly difficult to follow and nothing to mitigate the problem. A year of compromise, with DRS retained but hopefully unused, would be worth the slightly suboptimal rear wing for a year.

          1. @drmouse I just can’t remotely entertain that the new regs will fail nor that the teams would be planning for that. They’ve been an integral part of this process. As I opined elsewhere, they are simplifying the wings, they are doing far far more with the floor and rear diffuser, and they will be making much less wake with which to begin. Take any one of those aspects on their own and I’m sure the racing would already be better and without drs. All three? How can they possibly still suffer in dirty air to the same degree? Let’s give Brawn and Liberty and the teams some credit here.

    2. Agree with this. Don’t see the point in binning it ahead of confirming the regs are working. There is no reason they can’t run around with the wings disabled so you lose nothing but gain the ability to pivot mid season if necessary.

      Also gives the opportunity to run some proper back to back tests if so desired so they know exactly what differences they’ve actually made.

    3. I agree – that would be the sensible approach because unlike the few Liberty fans that believe that Ross walks on water, I think there’s still a high probability that once the new regulations arrive, they’ll find that there’s still far too much wake and that cars will struggle to follow each other.

      I’ve always said DRS was implemented incorrectly – I hate the idea of DRS zones (leave it up to the drivers to decide when to use it)

      If movable wings were included in the new regulations, then fine dump DRS immediately, otherwise wait a year or two. It doesn’t necessarily have to be used, but at least it’s there if needed.

      1. @tdm @dbradock See Keith’s “I say” where he implies they need to completely rid themselves of drs in order to give their new concept a rightful test.

        To me, trying to keep drs for 2021 would be to take some meager wishy-washy approach to this ground up restoration they are doing. It would say they cannot get off their aero downforce addiction in spite of all the concepts shown and what the verbiage has implied.

        In other words, keeping drs ‘just in case’ makes completely no sense.

  9. DRS is the most unfair device in sports. All the sports.
    Get rid of it before it’s too late.
    Completely agree with Keith.

  10. YES! YES! YES!

    P.S. And don’t dare to replace it with similar atrocities – Fan Boost, Joker lap, etc.

    1. It’s Liberty, it’s now a “show” – of course they will

  11. I don’t like DRS as well, but it has served a pourpose.
    I could be more critical if the leading driver, after being passed with the use of DRS, overtakes his oponent againg using DRS two laps later. And so on, and on, and on.
    But that hardly happens. A driver goes thru using DRS and then disappears in the distance.
    If Ross Brawn team can really find a way of letting cars follow each other closely, getting the tow and all, gone is DRS.
    But they tried something this year and according to the drivers did not change much. They increased the DRS effect, by the way.

  12. Get rid of it asap or let everyone use it when they want

    1. Exactly. There should be no zones or any other kind of timing specific intervention on availability. Let the drivers decide when and where to use it or prohibit it.

  13. I hate DRS, but I voted strongly disagree.

    On the current cars it’s a necessary evil – there’s not enough strength in a natural slipstream to make up for the time lost in dirty air. Without a strong tyre or general pace advantage, a car would be around 0.7-0.9s behind a rival heading onto a straight, and even the ‘standard’ Tilke 1km straight isn’t long enough for a natural slipstream to drag a car into range from that far back. A natural slipstream seems to be worth around 0.2-0.4s – DRS is needed to provide the possibility of overtaking.

    Will it be needed for 2021? I don’t know… I know the idea is that the 2021 cars will be capable of following closely enough for DRS to not be necessary, but there’s a big difference between ‘idea’ and ‘what actually happens’. The outcome could be a huge success, or a great stinking disappointment that makes hardly any difference at all. We won’t know until the first race.

    So for me, there’s no question at all that they should leave it on the cars for 2021. But that doesn’t mean they have to use it if it turns out they don’t need to.

    1. @neilosjames Personally I’m quite confident that the 2021 cars will not need nor have drs, but setting aside that argument (the pros of drs, of which I don’t think there are any, and the cons of which there are many) I’m of the understanding and belief that they can’t design a car and it’s wings with drs in mind and then simply take drs away if they decide that is prudent. At least not without another major redesign.

      No, I am utterly confident that there is no desire by Brawn and his team to do anything but redesign the cars to make much less wake to begin with, and to be much less clean air dependent, so a double strike against drs as Brawn has never been a fan, and they’ve talked as well about putting more of the racing in the drivers’ hands.

  14. A lot of people ‘hate DRS’. I do not. What I don’t like is the fact that it is somehow accepted that at a lot of tracks F1 races on, overtaking is pretty much impossible.

    I’d rather watch a few ‘easy’ passes instead of a fast car simply being stuck behind a slow one just because the track is to narrow, or the cars ar to wide or whatever.

    DRS doesn’t make a slow car overtake a faster one. It helps the already faster one to get past. If the advantage is in fact unfair, the overtaken car should be able to retake it’s place, just as ‘easy’.

    1. @franco Or they could just simply make the new cars less clean air dependent and then they won’t need a gadget to make for fake passes that are never memorable.

      1. @robbie they have tried and failed to address the dirty air following issue many tones in the past. There new regs look promising, but if they fail and DRS is gone, we could have a year of parades where the cars stay in the danger order for the whole race. Is it worth the risk?

        1. @drmouse The ‘before’ you speak of was under BE’s and CVC’s watch. As I say above, when you consider all they are addressing technically, can you really imagine failure? I find it impossible to imagine anything but drastic improvement, but ok if one wanted to be pessimistic about it, I’d still there here has to be at least some degree of improvement. Enough to be rid of drs. Brawn’s work is unprecedented and not only vastly more involved than anything the previous working group did a decade ago, right before BE and CVC handed the power to the top teams, but the findings will actually be implemented this time. To imagine no change is unfathomable to me.

  15. Time for f1 to adopt the push to pass of Indycar and Superformula. This is 2021, time to embrace the future.

  16. Obviously if the new regs succeed, DRS of course should be obsolete. The thing that bothers me though is by the time the new regs kick in, 10 years will have passed since the introduction of DRS and not once in those 10 years, even after 2,5 major regulation changes, did anyone from FIA consider changing the nature of DRS. And by that i mean making it more like the pre-2014 KERS system. Give every driver an “X” amount of seconds per race to use it (say 60sec for example) and let each driver decide how to use it. No zones, no 1sec behind the leading car rule, just “X” seconds of DRS to everyone and let them figureout what to do with it.

    If Verstappen wants to use it little by little every lap so he can catch up the leading car and overtake it…let him.
    If Vettel wants to save it until he has to defend from another car with fresher tires and then use it just to stay ahead…let him.
    If Hamilton wants to use all of it at once at the start to build up a big gap and control the race…let him.

    1. @black, since your plan allows for drs for both attacking and defending what is the point ? Also consider that the leading cars will be able to save their DRS use for defense while cars behind will have to use their DRS in order to advance to a position where they can attack the leaders who will just DRS themselves away.

  17. Some others have mentioned it here, but what about allowing any driver to activate it when they are in the DRS zones only a certain number of times a race? It can be used to pass, defend, in/out lap, or fastest lap.

  18. Had to choose neither yes or no. Yes it shouldn’t exist in its current mode. But if the new regulations fail, then DRS will be still be needed to compensate. So maybe implement DRS, but limit its use to free use by drivers in qualifying? Then barred from use in races, but available to be reinstated if the aero changes prove to fail in their job. In itself, DRS isn’t bad, it’s a logical adaptative technology to increase car speed, that’s all. The problem is enabling some drivers to use it, while denying others, on a lap by lap basis.

    1. @david-br Unfortunately there is far more to it than just helping a car increase it’s speed. There’s no ‘that’s all’ about it. Drs passes are fake and forgotten the second after they happen. Drs has harmed the integrity of the sport.

      Cars can easily be designed to not be so clean air dependent when there is the will and the motivation by the racing entitiy to do so, so why have fake gadget passes that will never go down in the archives as classic battles between gladiators on the track if one does not have to?

      I do not believe the new regs will fail. They’re addressing how much wake a car makes and are reducing that…they are addressing the floors with a complete revamp to have the cars make much more of their downforce there rather than from wings…they are simplifying the wings such that cars will not be nearly as harmed while in the lessened amount of dirty air. That’s three huge aspects they are addressing and I’m of the opinion that even just introducing any one of those three things would be enough cause to be able to rid themselves of drs.

      1. Cars can easily be designed to not be so clean air dependent

        If it’s so easy to do, why has everyone who had tried to do so for now than a decade, through several regulation chances which intended to do just this, failed?

        Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly hopeful of the 2021 regs. They look like they should do the job. However, they could still fail to do so, and there’s a good chance this would leave us with the most boring season on record.

      2. @robbie I’m not sure you understood the point I was making. It’s not the technology that’s fake, it’s the application, making it momentarily available to one driver, not the other.

        1. @david-br But that wouldn’t negate the fact that it is a fake gadget. If you had a chance to reset F1, why would you still build in so much proven race-harming clean air dependence that you’d have to have a gadget to compensate let alone have to manipulate it’s usage to best cover for cars built to not race each other. Let’s just build cars that can race each other and then it will be up to the drivers driving cars, not manipulating gadgets. If the problem is that they should all be able to use it at the same time, then why even have it? So they can maintain low lap times via downforce? Most watching on TV would forget about laps a few seconds slower if the action was often close and enthralling. And they’ll still have the downforce from simplified wings but moreso the floor.

          1. @robbie I don’t disagree with you (or Keith) at all. I want rid. But a season of no overtaking because the aero changes have failed to work sounds even worse to me. Although DRS is ‘fake’ in many ways, so is the aero generated (some might say deliberately…) that stalls the driver behind and curbs their ‘actual’ speed. That’s what DRS is meant to counteract. Sure it’s a terrible solution, but it’s a solution to an aero ‘flaw’ or ‘trick’ (take your pick) that is in many ways much more harmful to racing.

          2. @david-br Gonna sound like a broken record here but I’ll just say again I cannot see how the things they will be implementing can do anything but not only promote much closer racing, they will take the cars way past needing drs.

            As if actually seeing cars stuck behind each other wasn’t enough, drs is actual proof that they (BE and the top teams) have gone the wrong direction in the past few decades (at least), with their aero addiction. Everything Brawn has talked about has hinted at that addiction as needing addressing. It is the very reason he has had two cars in a wind tunnel nose to tail. This is why I am struggling to understand peoples’ skepticism. For how long was the majority saying BE has to go. Then when he finally gets replaced the entity replacing him immediately starts saying all the right things about all that needs addressing in F1. But somehow that still doesn’t seem to matter for some. I find that baffling. I think the effort Liberty and Brawn are putting in should be rejoiced…not shot down before they’ve even been able to put anything into practical play contractually.

          3. @robbie
            More than anything else, the major risk to the new regs working as expected (IMHO) is the teams. They employ some very clever people who will work tirelessly to get the most possible out of the new regulations, and they could very well find something which Brawn and his team haven’t thought of. In doing so they could very well increase the cars’ susceptibility to dirty air.

            If this increases the cars’ performance, the other teams will try to copy it, and we would suddenly have a field full of cars which can no longer follow closely. The FIA can’t change the regs mid season to address the issue, they must rule as to whether the design complies with the regs as written, so we are stuck with a parade season.

            No matter the regs or how well thought out they are (and I know they’re trying to replicate this already), there is a reasonable chance that one of the genius engineers out there will do something which negates them while being completely within the rules.

          4. @drmouse Yeah fair comment and of course from my armchair I have to cede that what you are saying might be possible, but it is this sense that I have that the regs are going to be so different and so well thought out to prevent the level of race-harming dirty air they’ve had for so long, that I think any ideas the clever people come up with will not possibly take too much away from the new cars and their ability to race closely.

            I just don’t envision there being so much leeway in the regs such that a Newey for example will be able to reverse the trend too much in terms of cars much less dependent on clean air. The whole spirit of the regs will be set out for cars to not be nearly so affected in dirty air, and while I wouldn’t expect teams to be trusted to necessarily just not look into it for the sake of that being against the spirit of the rules, I suspect that as hard as they try, the regs will be shaped such that the cars will still be quite capable of racing more closely no matter what ingenious and legal ideas the teams come up with. My thinking is that if let’s say the new cars will only lose 10% or 15% of their downforce rather than the 50% that it is now, a Newey might design something that will create a little more dirty air, and that might mean the trailing car loses say 20% of it’s downforce, but no more, which would still make it very much less dependent on clean air than cars have been for decades.

            Further to that, let’s say I’m wrong and indeed a Newey comes up with a way to legally get cars back to making as much wake as before, well for one thing let’s remember that the wings of the trailing cars will be less sensitive to dirty air, and there will be ground effects done in a way like never before in F1, and…Liberty can and to me likely will simply change the regs again for the next season to close that loophole and bring the cars back to being as originally planned for 2021 to not make so much wake.

  19. I say don’t get rid of it. BUT make it available all the times, for all sessions, all laps, for all drivers in the designated zones.

    1. @slavichou There’s a reason why DRS only ever becomes available on lap three at the very earliest in each race, and while I’m not 100% sure what it is, I’m pretty positive the intent is to get the cars a bit more spread out than they are at the starts.

      1. Unless I am mistaken, the use of DRS is totally open, any driver, any place on the track, during qualifying and practice.
        It is only in the race that use is restricted.
        It just becomes a piece of movable aero. Something that is supposed to be banned.

        1. @rekibsn

          It just becomes a piece of movable aero. Something that is supposed to be banned.

          The main arguments for banning are cost (to avoid hugely expensive techno-wars by the teams trying to design movable aero, probably a potentially near infinite area of experimentation) and the fact that more complex solutions could be automated with little or no driver input. DRS is fairly basic, standardized and controlled by the driver. So I don’t think it’s the worst thing out there. The problem is not making it constantly available to drivers to use as they wish (like brakes or accelerator pedals, say). That said, I don’t think it’s necessary.

  20. Duncan Snowden
    18th August 2019, 14:34

    Assuming the 2021 regs improve the ability to follow closely then yes, of course DRS per se should go. However, I think the most interesting thing about the experiment is that it’s shown that “moveable aerodynamic devices” can be used safely in top-level motorsport. With modern technology, the high standard of engineering in today’s F1, and proper oversight, the apparent morbid fear the FIA had of them for forty years has proved to have been unfounded. I’d like to see some kind of driver-trimmable wing retained, without DRS’s arcane restrictions on activation.

  21. Yes they should. However, when we don’t see dozens of artificial passes per race, [some] fans will start to complain that there are less overtakes now than before and F1 is boring. Rather than giving it a chance for a few races they will lash out at F1 calling for change, then F1 will have a knee-jerk reaction and overcorrect instead of getting a proper understanding of the situation.

    If you can’t tell, I’m rather cynical about fan influence on the sport.

  22. F1 should slash upper surface aero full stop. Lets see what 21st century versions of 1968 cars look like….80% kinetic road-dynamics and only 20% aerodynamics.

  23. Replace “DRS” with “RSD” (Rob Smedley Directive). If a more important driver is struggling to get through then a cryptic call comes over the radio suggesting that someone should move over? :-D

  24. But isn’t that already the intention of the 2021 aero-changes, though? Kind of a pointless poll when looking at it this way.

    ”DRS is fundamentally unfair: it hands a significant advantage to a driver following another car closely. I wouldn’t have put it on the cars in the first place. Forget 2021, I’d take it off tomorrow.
    Because DRS creates easy, push-button passing, it weakens the incentive to improve how closely cars can follow each other by other ways. The exhaustively-research 2021 proposal looks by far the best chance yet of fixing this problem properly. To give it its best chance of success, DRS has simply got to go.”

    – Wrong and wrong (again). How many times does DRS actually make a real difference in aiding overtaking especially with the aero since 2017? 95-99% of the time, it doesn’t really make any difference whatsoever, and again, unfair to try and blame it alone for passing moves that might look easy from the outside.

    1. @jerejj If your claim of 95%-99% is accurate then that just shows how badly the cars are clean air dependent.

  25. So the argument is that DRS artificially levels the playing field for drivers that are behind and a majority participating in the poll want to get rid of it. Yet HAM and Mercedes dominate the sport even though this field leveling device is in place and a majority of posters on this site seem to think that is a bad thing. I’m just as confused as when I see Prince Harry ripping through Sicily in a Maserati complaining about global warming.

    1. @jimfromus No it doesn’t level the playing field, it makes the leading car defenceless.

  26. Voted yes, but some very interesting comments here have me wondering.
    What will be the effect of getting rid of it…how about one race this year its ‘taped shut’ and we see what happens ?
    @I’m pleasantly surprised by how few major accidents have resulted with the thing sticking open.

  27. ^ ‘resulted from’…

  28. This is a good discussion! I voted “Slightly disagree” (7%), because I would love a pure racing, but there are currently too many “what ifs”. We have not seen the final version of new rules. Besides, in Monaco, Hungary, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and probably in some more tracks a chance to use DRS is a necessity in case as one person here mentioned: “Imagine Verstappen and Hamilton in an intense battle for the lead both drivers pit and come out behind Bottas. Team orders let Hamilton through, but Verstappen, without DRS, remains stuck behind Bottas for the remainder of the race despite being able to run a lot faster.” I also agree with this opinion: “Give every driver an “X” amount of seconds per race to use it (say 60sec for example) and let each driver decide how to use it. No zones, no 1sec behind the leading car rule, just “X” seconds of DRS to everyone and let them figureout what to do with it.” It would be useful if Keith or someone else could make a summary of these opinions here, because they are useful!

  29. I agree with Keith, if there were no DRS, then the aero guys would have found a way to make the cars run closer together in the last 10 years. I think DRS had the opposite affect than intended; it stifled development of close racing aero.

    1. Don’t forget the same aero guys, particularly on the top teams, have been trying to design cars to make as much dirty air as possible, without harming their own aero efficiency, so that the trailing car has a harder time passing them.

  30. I strongly agree DRS should be binned – it is completely artificial, it doesn”t actually create close racing, in the sense that it means one car just drives past another on a straight as if lapping it, and it’s nothing but a gimmick that completely papered over the problem that the aerodynamics create.

    However, I think there is a compromise to scrapping it entirely. Leave it in the regulations. If the 2021 cars deliver as promised and allow the cars to follow each other, superb, don’t implement DRS zones and detection points. If the new regulations fail, the provision is there in the rulebook to allow DRS to create some sort of overtaking, artificial or not.

  31. On principle I’m all for removing it. But I don’t think we have the full data yet. As it is now there is no talk about significant reduction of downforce for 2021 which is the key issue with dirty air. The 2021 rules seem to be pushing more ground effects which in itself is less affected by dirty air but at the same time any dirty air coming from the floor is more harmful for the car behind than the dirty air coming from the rear wing for example. Dirty air from the rear wing simply goes over the following car whereas diffusers and tunnels leave a trail of dirty air nearer the ground.

    As such I have some doubts about the projected figures of going from 50% to 5-10% loss of downforce (after all it is from 50% to 5-10%. Not 5-10% of what we have now). First of all is the question that is that even going to happen and secondly what does it do to drag. Slipstreaming is a massively important factor in overtaking. Effectively when you follow other car (in car that generates downforce) you lose some downforce but your drag is also reduced which allows you to go faster and get to overtaking position. Slipstreaming = reduction of drag. Which leads to situation where in corners you are slower than the car in front but on straights you are faster.

    With the reduction of slipstreaming a lot of the overtaking relies on the car behind actually being able to follow closer to get and maximise the slipstream and cars being more difficult to drive so car ahead can make mistakes. With the way hybrid engines have computer controlled energy deployment on corner exits these mistakes are rare. You also have to keep in mind that pirelli is still making those tires. Following other car will still cause the car to slip and slide more and unless pirelli and fia change their approach you may end up in situations where following close enough still burns out the tires or puts the tires outside of their optimal performance temperatures and that happens quicker than it takes time to pressure the car in front into a mistake. After all if slipstreaming is reduced and cars can follow closer you actually need to be closer than currently to try an overtake and the closer you get the more tire wear you get.

    I think it is a huge mistake to not reduce downforce levels but I think f1 wants the new new 2021 cars to break lap records just for the sake of it. Even if it expotentially creates impossible problems for them to solve without drs. We do certainly live in totally different era in f1 than ever before. Before the hybrids every rule change aimed to slow down the cars. Now every rule change is centered on the idea that cars need to become faster or stay as they are. “Not one step back.” It is not healthy and creates very expensive problems that will require drastic changes to the dna of f1 with big increase in usage of spec parts for example just so an exec can quote a fast lap in a press release. After all the key issues for f1 is downforce, weight and tires and all those are connected. What 2021 promises is more spec aero, no reduction in weight and tires that still need to handle massive weight and downforce levels from the car which severely limits their design. But at least there are more faster ever laps coming to those who care about them…

    1. Uh i think your premise is wrong. Wing dirty air is worse for cars following than floor dirty air. Look at indy car: no wings snd they follow close at the indy 500.

        1. @socksolid I’m not sure of the accuracy of several things you are saying. Also, referencing an expert who is talking about one specific aspect, wake off the current rear wings, on the current cars, is of little value to the discussion about the new cars for 2021. 2021 cars will have completely different rear wings. And that’s just one aspect.

          I believe the talk has indeed been about a reduction in aero downforce. I also do not recall them obsessing over smashing lap records in the new era.

          I think you are trying to apply current aero thinking to the new cars whereas the new cars are going to shape air in an entirely different way once the combination of wings shaped as we have never seen before in F1 are combined with floors we have never seen before, all the while with cars making less wake than we have seen before. Given all that, I think we have to trust the unprecedented work that Brawn and his team have done with two cars nose to tail in a wind tunnel and throw out what we know of, for example, what happens to the wake off of a current F1 car.

          We can’t say that in 2021 the wake will necessarily go over the trailing car…it may or may not, but it will be a lesser wake and the trailing car will be less affected by it due to it’s simplified wings. You doubt Brawn’s figures of how much less downforce cars will lose, and I don’t get why when we haven’t any reason to doubt Brawn who is the one doing the most current and unprecedented research. Who cares if it is about 5-10% of current cars or the new cars…it’s all relative. Rather than losing half their downforce as it is now, the new cars when trailing another car will lose so little that closer racing will ensue.

          1. No. What I said and what the expert said is applicable to literally every single seater out there that has a rear wing. Air flow hits the rear wing and it goes up. Only time when that does not happen is when you try to minimize drag so you angle the wing to be flat with the airflow. In most cars this is actually little bit upwards. Or if you happen to find a single seater which does not have any kind of ground effect. Which is only possible if the car has high ground clearance. Otherwise the floor of the car will affect the airflow.

            Regardless of how wing is shaped it needs to generate downforce. Only way it can do that is if it essentially moves the air upwards. The 2021 cars won’t shape the air in different way. The wings create downforce and for that to happen you need to move the air like we have always done with wings.

          2. @robbie
            https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.why-the-2021-f1-cars-still-need-front-and-rear-wings-symonds.2KEopwIbPMTdZQvC6LN8Ox.html
            “you need a rear wing to pick up the wake, all the dirty air that’s behind the car, and lift it up over the following car”

            I’m not sure of the accuracy of several things you are saying. Also, referencing an expert who is talking about one specific aspect, wake off the current rear wings, on the current cars, is of little value to the discussion about the new cars for 2021. 2021 cars will have completely different rear wings

            Looks like the 2021 rear wings work like rear wings have always worked in single seaters. Completely different? Not at all.

          3. @socksolid And again, you seem to want to single out wings only, and I am saying that with the combination of simplified wings of a different shape than they have used before, along with underbody work for ground effects that will also be shaped differently than before, and everything about the car designed in general to make less wake, we will have cars that will effectively be able to run more closely because the trailing car will not only be less sensitive to dirty air, less in need of clean air, but the leading car will also make less wake.

            I’ve never argued for no wings, and the article you referenced talks about why they need wings, and I’ve never expected they wouldn’t have wings. The concern here is not that wings make wake or control wake or whatever they do with wake. The concern is how much wake a car makes along with where the wake might be focused, but just as importantly if not more, how sensitive the cars will be to dirty air to begin with…and they’ll be much less sensitive to it.

            It seems like you are arguing against what they are doing, and I think what they are doing by tackling several aspects at once is going to reshape the overall way air is used and the way it comes off the car in location and intensity and will be unprecedented used in the way and combination that they are doing.

          4. @robbie
            I replied to specific part of your post and proved you were wrong. I even quoted it to make it easier for you. Now you are trying to imagine things I’ve never said like no wings or that I said rear wings are bad. John s said rear wings were bad which is another thing I have proven wrong below and argued against. The rest of your post is pretty much trash. If you say I said something then quote it because you are simply inventing things at this point. I’m happy to be proven wrong. I consider it a learning experience. But when your whole post is about “so you are saying” and then you invent some random thought I never said and argue against it I can only assume what you are trying to do.

          5. @socksolid Let me just start by saying I do apologize for this discussion degrading as it has, unnecessarily so. I’ll take the lions share of the blame for that as I have not meant for it to become this adversarial.

            I think I got my back up a bit because it seemed like you were arguing against what Brawn and his team are working on and what the new cars will be like. Particularly when you spoke of your doubts about, for example, the percentage of downforce lost, and saying things like ‘is that even going to happen’ got my back up a bit because I trust this unprecedented work they are doing as they are the experts and the work is, as I say, unprecedented. I’m not sure all downforce always creates drag if the way the downforce is created is efficient, for example. Will they really need to slipstream if they are barely affected in dirty air and can just power their way up to the car ahead?

            When I said I never argued for no wings, I wasn’t suggesting that you had accused me of doing that, but just that the article you cited was one that argued for wings, almost like there has been a body of people that have been lobbying for no wings and that Symonds felt the need to explain why wings will still be needed.

            I think why I’ve argued a bit here is because your comments, to me at least, seem to have a tone that you still think there will be too much dirty air, and you cite ground effects as being a creator of such, as well as their alleged desire to maintain current levels of downforce, and I’m simply not convinced of that. I’m not convinced that the latest greatest work they are doing will result in ground effects that makes harmful or excess dirty air, nor that they want just as much downforce, nor that the cars will be too adversely affected by such. That is why I have repeated that I think we have to take everything they are doing together as a package for all aspects will interact with each other to create cars that will be able to follow more closely.

            When I consider the concept shots we have seen I see a low rear wing, perhaps to hide it from being hit with dirty air. I see simplified wings that won’t be nearly as sensitive to dirty air. And of course there’s the ground effects that will be done differently that it was 40 years ago, and I admit I am assuming has been designed to not create an overt amount of dirty air for that is something they have worked to avoid.

            Your concerns of downforce, drag, and slipstream are of course valid points and I think have likely all been addressed to ensure everything adds up to cars able to follow much more closely. As I have said on other days, I think any one aspect alone…simplified wings unlike we’ve seen before, or ground effects done like we haven’t seen before, or cars making less wake than they have in decades, should help very much towards closer racing, so when all three aspects are combined I have all kinds of faith that the racing will be much better with cars much less adversely affected than they have been for decades. I don’t see how that can’t happen and I’m perfectly happy as well as stoked to trust these experts and the work they are doing.

          6. @robbie
            Apologies from me too. My tone could have been a lot friendlier. What I have poorly been trying to explain is that many of these aerodynamic concepts are big general things that apply to everything. They are not some smaller details that occur in very specific situations. Downforce does always create drag. The more efficient your wing the less drag it creates but there is always some. Efficiency also means less dirty air per downforce created because less air is disturbed.

            As for the rear wing one of the things the rear wing can do is work together with the diffuser. This is simply about the distance between the two. The closer the two are the more the rear wing helps the diffuser to generate more downforce. Some cars like the famous porsche 962 (I think) were designed specifically to take full benefit of this phenomena to get more downforce. It can also lead to weird issues where adding more rear wing can actually create more downforce on the front (complete opposite what one would expect) because the front splitter and diffuser are aerodynamically connected to the rear diffuser and because the rear wing affects the diffuser it also affects the front… Anyways in 2021 regulations this close positioning of the rear diffuser and rear wing helps the rear diffuser move the dirty air coming from the diffuser high up with the rear wing wake.

            This is the sort of interesting dilemma with the rear of the f1 car. The higher you move the rear wing the less its wake affects the car behind. But the lower it is the more it moves the wake from the diffuser so it affects the car behind. But the lower the rear wing the more wake it generates that disturbs the car behind it while also making the difffuser work more efficiently which creates less dirty air.

            You are of course fully correct that 2021 is a sum of many moving parts and more ground effects is just one part of all the changes.

        2. Sorry the video does not tell the while story. The upper moving air is replaced near ground level by in flow near the ground forming a vortex near as my wind tunnel data showed. One has to look at the entire flow field, not just the portion that supports ones opinion. The in flow from the floor (ground effects) is affected by the ground so it is minimized due to ground friction/boundary layer.

          I stand by my premise, the wing wake is more upsetting than the floor wake.just ask any indy car guy/gal.

          1. You are comparing apples to oranges. Indy cars on oval work at much lower downforce levels and that alone changes the rear wing functionality completely. Since you mention indy 500 let’s look at indy500. Indy runs their rear wings almost flat on indianapolis to avoid drag and downforce. This obviously means the air does not go up because the rear wing is designed to avoid it. You are also missing other point. The less wings and downforce the faster the speeds on those ovals. The faster you go the more dirty air you generate.

            Indycars running on ovals with flat wings does not prove that in f1 car the rear wing generates more dirty air than the underside of the car. You are comparing so different situations that you could as well compare f1 and nascar.

          2. Johns, just to prove how totally wrong you are just watch this video and tell me again how it is relevant for f1 aerodynamics discussion to compare f1 car to indycar which has devices installed on it to disable diffuser and ground effects completely. Rules require those devices. You say the rear wing is the main thing that generates dirty air in indycars on ovals so it must be so on f1 cars on road courses as well.

            Wrong. Just completely wrong.

            They have disabled the diffuser so it doesn’t do much anything! They are removing the side elements and strakes from the diffuser and adding gurney flaps on the bottom to kill as much of the downforce from the floor and diffuser as possible. And they still want to add as much downforce as possible. The video doesn’t even show the additional bits on the bottom of the car to kill the downforce of the floor even more.
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErySxleZtSU

  32. I strongly disagreed on the grounds that until the new regulations have proved to work we shouldn’t make such a change. I watched too many Trulli trains ruin races to want to go back to that, it doesn’t take anymore skill to drive slowly in front of a faster car that loses all performance when it closes within a second than it does to breeze by on a straight.

    Sure DRS is a plaster on the overtaking issue but it could and should be tuned to be less powerful and hopefully if the regulations work it can be stopped for races like Monza, Spa, Canada, etc, etc. I still would like it on tracks like Hungary and Monaco though for the first year in particular.

  33. isaac (@invincibleisaac)
    18th August 2019, 20:47

    Personally I have mixed views on DRS. I do believe F1 would be better without it in 2021 so long as the issue of closely following cars is resolved. In recent races I have seen both positives and negatives for DRS in terms of wheel-to-wheel battles.

    Austria is a good example of where I thought DRS worked well – VER would have struggled significantly more to overtake VET without DRS which would have meant he might not have caught up to the back of LEC in time. When he did have a go at LEC it was largely because he was close enough to make an attempt because of the DRS, and I was glad that he didn’t breeze past him. Instead, he got close and earned the overtake in a corner. However, had the positions been switched then LEC would’ve breezed passed VER with the significant Ferrari straight line speed advantage over the Red Bull, and with DRS it would’ve been too easy.

    It largely depends on the track though. No-one ever complains of “artificial overtakes” at Monaco because regardless of how powerful the DRS is it’s incredibly difficult to overtake. But tracks like Canada, Baku, and when VET was on the prowl in Germany, the DRS was too powerful as the straights are already long enough. I expect the next couple of races with the long straights to lead to some easy DRS passes, but it can work well for narrower tracks.

    However I think that DRS robbed us of a closer battle between HAM and VER in Hungary. Lewis was massively faster on fresh tyres and I’m sure he could have found a way past without DRS, such was his pace advantage, but once he got DRS and a good run he just breezed past him and a potentially closer battle over the final laps was over.

    Maybe get rid of DRS in 2021 but I would love to see something like KERS back. ALO was always very good with KERS as he was strategic with when to use it, and I love the thought of drivers being able to deploy a boost around any part of the lap and having to use tactics in this sense.

  34. If I remember correctly, the item which could change its shape is forbidden in F1. But we have the DRS. Interesting, ha? The main reason why it is so hard to overtake is the downforce loss during the corners when someone is following others. So instead of using the DRS, we should introduce a downforce increase system. To let drivers get close, to let them fight wheel to wheel. So one can follow his rival close in the corner, and hide in his behind to reduce the drag, finally have a fight in the break zone. The overtake is not the core of racing, how to overtake is.

  35. My opinion hasn’t changed: let DRS be active until the front wheels of the overtaking car are aligned with the rear wheels of the overtaken car. this can be achieved easily with sensors of any sort. At that point the DRS is closed again. So you have the two cars wheel to wheel on the same level of drag. In my mind this works a charm to mantain the goods of DRS and to avoid the bad. Hope someday this gets implemented

  36. Fans of genuine racing: “I Hate DRS”.
    Fans of The Show: “DRS is not so bad”.

    Fact of the matter is, giving the chasing driver a distinct advantage over the leading driver is unsportsmanlike and the entire concept erodes the credibility of F1. Even in this thread there is the link to the silly YouTube video where apologists create fancy graphics to justify such blatant unsportismanlike rules: “it is to balance the advantage the leading car has on the corners, as per the video”.

    This sentence forgets a key aspect of sports/competition: The leading car got there by merit!
    Perhaps they were faster in qualifying and should be able to pull a gap, or perhaps a driver was able to overtake at the start using a better launch and situational awareness in the chaos.

    DRS, in it’s current form, makes such things almost irrelevant, since the attacker has such an overwhelming advantage. They need to mandate spec wings (front and rear), and let the bargeboards, floor rake, ground effect, “brake cooling elements” become areas where engineers can improvise and innovate.
    Another thing that needs to start doing is making the cars smaller, make them progressively smaller every year by ~5% until 2027. Current cars are behemoths, and it takes longer to overtake a van than it does a Toyota Yaris, even on the motorways of Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

  37. Have moveable front and rear wings and diffuser settings. However, each car is only allowed five configurations that must be set up prior to qualifying. During the race, drivers are allowed to change it at any time, but only once per lap (resetting at the start/finish line).

    Drivers can use a high downforce mode if they are beginning to be affected by the car in front, but will be hampered on the straight (unless they time their config setting properly). Drivers will also be able to defend, or recover a lost place.

    It may not increase overtaking, but it will increase fighting for position. That is what we should be wanting to see. Tactics will vary depending on the circuit, the strengths of a particular car and their opponent…we will actually see the drivers working.

    1. Or they could just build the cars they’re planning to build for 2021 and do away with all this moveable complexity you speak of that sounds like a nightmare.

  38. There is point not discussed – I’m pretty sure within the complex design of F1 cars they are specifically designed to create an unusable wash behind them.

    If they didn’t I would be very surprised.

    Are there any designers out there that would/could comment on this?

  39. Leave movable aero, but allow it to be used all around the track at the discretion of the driver attacking or defending – so instead of being a tool to facilitate overtakes make it into a tool that simply makes the car go faster.

  40. As far as i’m concerned get rid of DRS…In F1 it should be the driver and the car and no driver aids…I think Liberty Media should look back at the early 2000’s that was racing…At the moment it is like watching go-karts…F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport…

  41. Of course it should be abandoned. DRS is only in because they think it’s a cludge to make overtaking easier. The main point of the 2021 rule change is to make following behind easier. If we still need DRS after the new design rules then they will have completely failed in their task.

  42. Its amazing that we still have the DRS. Should have been gone years ago.

    Are they going to let teams design their own halo in 2021 or is it going to be a standard part an all cars like now? I think the way that F1 “resolved” the head protection problem is terrible. They raced for 60 years with open cockpits, even though everyone knew that a car with a roof is safer (duh). Then decades later in 2011 when the F1 car was actually the safest place to be (more than spectators, mechanics, marshals, etc) they bolt on a standard thong on all the cars. We hear its temporary, and that in the future teams would be able to design their own solutions. (reminds me of DRS). But when will that be 2030?

    Its like forcing motorbikes to have 4 wheels because 2 wheels is inherently unsafe and kills many people even on racetracks. Are we going to ban MotoGP because of safety? I agree with Toto here and would take a chainsaw to both DRS and the Halo.

  43. I myself would put a chainsaw to the halo…and get rid of the pirelli tyres…

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