F1 Fanatic

the principle it uses of not allowing the front rider to defend, effectively putting him on disadvantage

Allowing the driver in front to use it to defend would only result in there being no overtaking, completely defeating its own purpose.

I don’t really see what the problem with DRS is. We’ve seen it time and time again: it only allows the attacking driver to get their front wing alongside the rear wheels of the defending car. It certainly does not guarantee a pass; everything is still up to the driver. If one car has simply blasted past another, then the relative difference in speed between them meant a pass was inevitable, even without the DRS.

This is the kind of disgusting hypocracy that I see so often in so many fans. Everyone demanded more overtaking, and the Powers That Be have come up with a solution. But that solution isn’t good enough for the fans – you’ve gotten exactly what you wanted, but you all still whinge about it.

The solution is simple: if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Just don’t whinge about it like it’s going to change something.

Not everybody wanted more overtaking. I never wanted neither more nor less, in each year I just want the ones there is, because each overtaking manouver that is made, is earned, deserved.

You know what is going to happen? The ones really good, the overtakes that would have gone to history, 1- won’t even happen (because they just pass by DRS) or 2-they just get deluded with the rest and go unoticed. And yes, I’m talking of manouvers the likes of Hakinnen vs Schumi Spa 2000 or Kimi vs Fisi Suzuka 05 or Piquet vs Senna dont remember when. Is that a good F1 when you know any overtaking of that kind is not gonna happen this year (and while they don’t finally void DRS stupid zones)?

There were plenty of opportunities to ask about the cake. There was a fans’ survey before the 2010 season and there was a FOTA fans’ forum last year.

It’s not the best example or a metaphore, but would they just make a random cake or would they try to get the information on which cake you wanted?

There is no way the DRS could be implemented to make cars who just need that extra boost to get alongside and not have cars who are a lot faster already from having it way too easy for them.

Last year, even if you were half a second a lap faster, you had trouble getting by. That’s why the DRS was brought in. This year with the Pirellis and contrary strategies we often get cars which are much, much faster stuck behind others, which is why we see the “too easy” passes.

I’ve come to like the DRS less and less because I’ve realised that this is the case and the FIA keep compounding by putting it in places where we already see overtaking. In Canada you could have put it between 5-7 and 8-9, closing them up and leaving the rest to the drivers. But they put it in a place where it was guaranteed to work and by extension guaranteed to make it too easy for some.

I know if you go through the record-breaking overtaking figures you’ll see that most are due to Pirelli. Why? Because the majority of overtakes we’ve seen have been between cars that have pitted coming out behind those that haven’t or those that pitted earlier – in other words, people who are out of position. But when we’ve seen drivers go head-to-head, like Rosberg and Massa in Turkey or Button and Massa in Australia, we haven’t seen anything like as many guaranteed passes.

So in essence, it really is a case of take it or leave it. The problem with leaving it is that the very kinds of situations the DRS was brought in to prevent – head-to-heads spoiled by dirty air – would remain. I’d rather we get rid of those and suffer the consequences of easy overtakes (which could be mitigated by proper placement) than keep the easy defending of the years gone by.

Because the majority of these overtakes were actually done in wet races, Canada, Monza, Spa etc. where dirty air wasn’t a problem.

Fans didn’t want to see “more” overtaking per se, they wanted to see it made more possible.

Okay, you wanted overtaking. Demanded it, even. But no-one ever gave the FIA or the teams any indication of how they wanted that overtaking to happen. So the Powers That be went away and came up with a solution to the original problem. It have everything you wanted, but everyone is unhappy with it.

I’m not sure this is a fair assessment. There have been plenty of calls for the FIA to legislate for an increase in overtaking by reducing the reliance of the cars on over-body aerodynamics. If this was never picked up in the fan surveys this was because the appropriate questions were never asked – recall that one question on last year’s FOTA Fan Survey asked fans what their opinion was on the length of races, without giving respondents the option to suggest that races should be made longer. I don’t remember the FOTA surveys in detail but it’s perfectly possible this was also the case with overtaking/aero.

Nonetheless, the teams and FIA are aware of the problems caused by aerodynamics and had originally legislated to curtail some of them, by reintroducing ground effects. Of course, they have now decided not to do this, probably for the usual reason (the big teams who have invested lots of money into aerodynamic geniuses and wind tunnels putting pressure on the small ones to agree to scrap the changes).

One of the big issues with DRS is that it treats the symptom rather than the cause. It allows drivers to temporarily circumvent the issues of dirty air without addressing the cause of dirty air in the first place. It is even more frustrating that a potential solution to this cause was actually going to be adopted by the FIA before it was dropped.