[Rules] DRS: Is it time for it to go?

[S griffin]

DRS should never been introduced in the first place, it's got rid of the skill of overtaking. They should have reduced downforce sooner, rather than go for this sticky plaster solution. I have no problem with tyre changes, but they should be up to the driver and team what tyre they run. After all, they are done so quickly these days, they would happen anyway even if they weren't compulsory

[crmalcolm]

Originally Posted by Casper

Anything that interferes with the racing after the flag drops and is not initiated by the driver is in fact an enhancer and should not be there and that includes tyre pit stops and DRS.

Would that also extend to banning re-fuelling etc? Why should a team not be able to run on minimal fuel and fill up as required?

Originally Posted by Casper

This should be the pinnacle of car design and driver skill but that is not happening and never will. The pinnacle of motor sport? I don't think so.

I read this a lot, and wonder why the 'pinnacle' is considered to be car design / motor sport. This seems elitist, in that F1 is 'better' than all other car design and motor sport forms.

Many factors of car design exist outside of motor sport, and motor sport contains many disciplines other than formula racing.

When considering what is right for F1, I think it beneficial to remember that it is merely the pinnacle of open-wheeled single-seater motorsport only. As a result, it is entirely conceivable that other car design may be superior, and that other forms of motor sport may be more advanced. It is because it is open-wheeled that solutions such as DRS are required.

[Casper]

By saying enhancements I mean regulated & compulsory enhancements, the pitstop if voluntary should be a GREATER time than the lap speed to discourage clever teams trying to use tactical pit stops. It will never happen and I accept that others would not agree with the concept but if they are going to regulate for better racing then make the pit stop longer than the lap time which of course would have to be some sort of average. Let's be honest about artificial enhancements, they are going to use them so the enhancement should add a chance of creating a situation that the teams have very little control over and sending the car back out at a time not of the teams choosing will create a bit more uncertainty and drama to the whole thing.

[S griffin]

Originally Posted by crmalcolm

Would that also extend to banning re-fuelling etc? Why should a team not be able to run on minimal fuel and fill up as required?

Let's not even go there. In race refuelling should never return. All it did was make more place changes happen in the pits rather than on the race track. And the other thing is now it's banned is that teams and drivers can choose when to pit, instead of having it dictated by when they need to refuel.

But the most justifiable reason it's banned is safety. The risk of something going wrong during refuelling was too much. And I'm not talking about drivers, but mechanics who aren't paid as much. We were lucky we didn't have anyone seriously injured during the refuelling era

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Let's not even go there. In race refuelling should never return. All it did was make more place changes happen in the pits rather than on the race track. And the other thing is now it's banned is that teams and drivers can choose when to pit, instead of having it dictated by when they need to refuel.

But the most justifiable reason it's banned is safety. The risk of something going wrong during refuelling was too much. And I'm not talking about drivers, but mechanics who aren't paid as much. We were lucky we didn't have anyone seriously injured during the refuelling era

I don't disagree as such with the safety aspect, but if the frenzy to pit as quickly as possible was removed, safety would be enhanced. As you know, I watch endurance racing where fuel stops obviously take place routinely and even with less experienced crews, safety issues are pretty rare. If we could be less worried about having to do a pitstop in what are insanely stupid times, I think that would be an improvement. You see nothing worth watching in a sub 3 second pit stop.

[NaBUru38]

Originally Posted by S griffin

Let's not even go there. In race refuelling should never return. All it did was make more place changes happen in the pits rather than on the race track. And the other thing is now it's banned is that teams and drivers can choose when to pit, instead of having it dictated by when they need to refuel.

But the most justifiable reason it's banned is safety. The risk of something going wrong during refuelling was too much. And I'm not talking about drivers, but mechanics who aren't paid as much. We were lucky we didn't have anyone seriously injured during the refuelling era

IndyCar has refuelling and it works perfectly.

[BTCC frog]

I think it is difficult to really know what refuelling would be like today, given that the tyres were better then than they are now. At the time, refuelling played a big part in the sport and the tyres were less relevant, while now the tyres are the central part of the sport and refuelling obviously doesn’t play a part at all. I suspect if refuelling was brought back, the teams would just base their strategy around the refuelling and the drivers would just have to adjust their tyre-saving to that, so if it were reintroduced it would be a similar story to before. So I have simply compared F1 which is ‘all about the tyres’ with F1 which is ‘all about the fuel.’

Firstly, I believe the strategies are more exciting when it is about tyres. With fuel, the key thing that is used is the overcut, because the driver who has just pitted is slower than the driver about to pit. With tyres it is the undercut, as the driver who has just pitted has new tyres and is faster. And as drivers only have a set amount of fuel in the car at any one time, that means they are effectively forced into pitting on the lap they are (or earlier, which is slower), whereas with tyres an early pitstop can be made out of choice. This means that strategy is far more likely to be changed at short notice with tyres as the main thing instead of fuel, so I prefer this. Another thing is that a driver on maximum attack would wear out their tyres a lot more quickly than a driver driving conservatively so would pit much earlier, but probably would only use enough fuel for a handful fewer laps. This also means that strategy can change more during the race, which I like. I think with tyres, strategy is far more likely to have to be made up on the spot than with refuelling, which I think is more exciting and forces teams to be more reactive.

Also, I think it is more likely that there will still be question marks over who is going to win at the end of a race without refuelling. At the end of a race, every driver will have approximately the same amount of fuel, whereas their tyres can be in very varied condition. So I think the chance of late drama is more with tyre F1 than with fuel F1. And teams have more understanding of their opponents’ strategies, as they would generally know approximately what lap the pitstop would happen based on how long the refuelling rig was in (something that you cannot really stop them knowing), with the exception being when there was a problem. And as computers become more advanced, this would be even more accurate than it had been before. So I don’t think this is the case. With tyres, on the other hand, drivers can eke out a strategy far longer than a rival team was expecting. And sometimes the track conditions are just different to what was expected, with doesn’t apply to refuelling.

And I also just generally think that the individual races in the 10s were more exciting than in the 00s. So there is my reasoning for thinking F1 is better off without refuelling. But it seems from most fan surveys that the majority disagree with me.

However, I think the differing strategies are one of the most exciting parts of F1, watching a number of different teams go for different things and then the drivers having to make their team's strategy work (which would be much better without DRS as the driver defending would have more of a role to play), and so I would be disappointed if most races became no-stop races, with just a few drivers trying one-stops.

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by S griffin

DRS should never been introduced in the first place, it's got rid of the skill of overtaking.

Official DRS was introduced in exchange for 'banning' those dangerous F-ducts pseudo-DRS which were free to use anywhere in the lap but often required taking a hand off the steering wheel (albeit the originator McLaren used the driver's knee as the actuator which was a little more elegant).

Would you have instead have proposed a straight ban on F-ducts, which no replacement drag reduction mechanism?

As always, it is not something the regulators dreamt up one day but rather it is in response to what the competitors were doing. Just as the standardised pressurised refuelling rigs were reintroduced in response to competitors making their own pressurised refuelling rigs of varying levels of safety.

[GingerPixel]

My overly simplist view is to bin it. Too many races have become games of "DRS chicken".

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by GingerPixel

My overly simplist view is to bin it. Too many races have become games of "DRS chicken".

I'm with you. I think it has made too many races utterly farcical and has massively reduced the spectacle of racing drivers practicing their craft.

[S griffin]

I think a lot of F1 fans feel that. We should never have needed it, a close battle for position is good enough, even if no overtaking happens. Passing should be about quality not quantity. It's means more if it's down to driver skill

[chillibowl]

so impossible to separate the tracks from the cars, the teams knowledge of a place, set up variables across days and weather conditions etc etc...

but what can we take away from Max's DRS issues at a track notorious for producing processional F1 races? maybe nothing even?

was of course great to see George defend both from Max but also earlier against Perez who had DRS working but, for me, it was also an all too frequent reminder of how difficult it is for a faster car to pass a slower one at all too many venues.

of course some see this as a skill (the defending or passing under difficult conditions which i agree it very much is) but the flip side is that no matter how much skill/speed the following driver has over the slower car is too frequently not enough to overcome the aero/physics reality of the situation.

so until the underlying issues can be fixed (if they can even be fixed at all at this point), my take away from this was twofold, DRS is really still desperately needed and after 6 races the benefit of the new rule set has been eroded.

of course a biased opinion given my thoughts on DRS to begin with...so this race very much served to reinforce my views on its necessity which i admit is not a useful position to take when trying to generate a thoughtful discussion.

also didnt help that George, Max, and Perez were all on the same times with a similar number of laps completed with them which also suggests to me we need more differentiators to relative pace and thus a further knock against race distance tires...so more confirmation basis for me on that front as well.

will endeavour to keep an open mind to fresh new perspectives on this issue though!

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

for me, it was also an all too frequent reminder of how difficult it is for a faster car to pass a slower one at all too many venues.

I agree with your post, but the above really is the core of the problem with removing DRS today in my opinion.

Richard

[Aysedasi]

I still believe that the skill of overtaking has in part been removed by DRS and actually forgotten by some drivers. So many times over the last few years we've had the farcical situation of drivers breezing past the car in front with a degree of artificiality that actually makes F1 look rather daft. Or maybe it's the cars that have become daft, or the circuits have become daft because of the cars..... But DRS remains the top of the list of things that I hate about F1 - by a considerable margin. If we're worried about an inability to overtake and we have to retain DRS as a result, then limit it's use during a race, make the drivers really think about when to use it.

[BTCC frog]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

was of course great to see George defend both from Max but also earlier against Perez who had DRS working but, for me, it was also an all too frequent reminder of how difficult it is for a faster car to pass a slower one at all too many venues.

of course some see this as a skill (the defending or passing under difficult conditions which i agree it very much is) but the flip side is that no matter how much skill/speed the following driver has over the slower car is too frequently not enough to overcome the aero/physics reality of the situation.

so until the underlying issues can be fixed (if they can even be fixed at all at this point), my take away from this was twofold, DRS is really still desperately needed and after 6 races the benefit of the new rule set has been eroded.

of course a biased opinion given my thoughts on DRS to begin with...so this race very much served to reinforce my views on its necessity which i admit is not a useful position to take when trying to generate a thoughtful discussion.

I watched the Verstappen/Russell without DRS and thought that the lack of DRS improved the racing, as instead of a battle that lasted one lap before Verstappen breezed past on the straight we had a battle that lasted multiple laps with Verstappen stuck behind Russell but unable to get by. It is true that the closest racing happened on the brief moments when Verstappen did have DRS but he was close the whole time and so perhaps if the cars were all set up to race without DRS for 2023 he would have been closer and we could have had multiple laps of Verstappen right behind Russell trying to overtake, and the art of defending and overtaking become a much greater skill.

But of course a biased opinion given my thoughts on DRS to begin with...so this race very much served to reinforce my views on its non-necessity which i admit is not a useful position to take when trying to generate a thoughtful discussion.

However, our original opinions on DRS probably came from the fact that you think a race like the Russell/Verstappen battle is not good for F1, while I think it is good, and so seeing an example of it was always going to reinforce our previous views, and doesn't necessarily reflect a biased opinion.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by BTCC frog

I watched the Verstappen/Russell without DRS and thought that the lack of DRS improved the racing, as instead of a battle that lasted one lap before Verstappen breezed past on the straight we had a battle that lasted multiple laps with Verstappen stuck behind Russell but unable to get by.

Nice post, but to the point above.

I agree it was interesting to watch. But I also think part of why it was interesting is that Verstappen "knew" he should have been able to get past. And that if DRS was working he would have been more confident in making a pass work. I ended up watching that entire battle from Verstappen's onboard. So he was making multiple attempts in the hopes that DRS would work. At other time I think he was probably working to recharge battery, manage tire, etc. But... if there were no DRS available. I tend to think that the pass would have been difficult if not impossible unless George made a mistake. And if that was the situation, why would Verstappen have continued to try and try and burn up his tires in a futile attempt? I don't think he would have. We would NOT have seen multiple laps of attempts. He would have done (much earlier) what he eventually did and that was to pit to try to run without being stuck behind him.

My point is that, I don't think we can view that specific battle as an example of what a battle in a world without DRS would look like. I think a core question is... Is that type of situation in which Max looked likely to really not be able to overtake is what we want? Granted, it was top drivers is maybe the top three cars (assuming Mercedes is the new #3 in the pecking order). So maybe that is exactly what should have happened (Max could not pass)? I suspect that if that was the answer to the larger F1 audience on the whole, they would not agree. They would argue that Max was faster and there should have been a way to get around short of George making a mistake. I am not saying one way or another that I agree, but I suspect that people (on average) would not be happy if DRS went away tomorrow.

Richard

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by BTCC frog

However, our original opinions on DRS probably came from the fact that you think a race like the Russell/Verstappen battle is not good for F1, while I think it is good, and so seeing an example of it was always going to reinforce our previous views, and doesn't necessarily reflect a biased opinion.

I'm with you all the way on this.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by BTCC frog

However, our original opinions on DRS probably came from the fact that you think a race like the Russell/Verstappen battle is not good for F1, while I think it is good, and so seeing an example of it was always going to reinforce our previous views, and doesn't necessarily reflect a biased opinion.

in truth, i loved the battle and think it speaks well about the future battles this crop of young talent can bring to the table.

what i dont think is good for f1 is when a significantly faster car can be held up by a much slower car. defense is of course important and can be wonderful to watch but the reminder about how much faster the following car has to be in order to affect a pass does challenge my notions of what a 'race' or 'good racing' should be.

no doubt im overstating my point too much but i hope that my meaning comes across.

[Casper]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

in truth, i loved the battle and think it speaks well about the future battles this crop of young talent can bring to the table.

what i dont think is good for f1 is when a significantly faster car can be held up by a much slower car. defense is of course important and can be wonderful to watch but the reminder about how much faster the following car has to be in order to affect a pass does challenge my notions of what a 'race' or 'good racing' should be.

no doubt im overstating my point too much but i hope that my meaning comes across.

I have said it before and I might repeat it again, it is all about time, how short braking zones now are in time, how long cars are in a corner, how long they are on a straight etc. Reduce times and the opportunity to gain an advantage is reduced so we then see almost reckless driving because that is what drivers have to do to try and pass another car and frustration on the driver's part builds up until he tries something he normally would not. The manic headlong rush to reduce lap times is the single cause of this problem and it is only going to get worse. Of course those who want to see exciting racing always want to see faster cars but it is a self defeating ideal but carry on.

[VIVA GT]

Just to throw my hat into the ring on this discussion, surely, if the cars are evenly matched without it (as they appeared), but both had working DRS. If Max had got past George on one lap because of the DRS, surely George would have been able to do the same thing the next time around?

[Casper]

Originally Posted by VIVA GT

Just to throw my hat into the ring on this discussion, surely, if the cars are evenly matched without it (as they appeared), but both had working DRS. If Max had got past George on one lap because of the DRS, surely George would have been able to do the same thing the next time around?

So if we take that to its end point each car would have passed the other until the end and the one who worked out the penultimate pass to be in front for the chequered flag would be the winner. I get your point but a thousand reasons can change a good idea when you are in a race including the boss telling you not to pass. Get rid of all the extraneous crap, give the driver a car and let's see who can manage the race best from the driver's seat without pit management. It would also have the side effect of saving Horner and Toto from having a nervous breakdown and developing stomach ulcers. F1 is micro managed to a ridiculous degree and some of the control should be removed for the good of the sport.

[S griffin]

We don't need loads of overtaking in F1, we just need the cars to be close enough to battle. Strategy is still important, so the pit wall will still have a part to play. It is still a sport of high maintenance. The driver still has a part to play though, even if it is less nowadays

[Casper]

Originally Posted by S griffin

We don't need loads of overtaking in F1, we just need the cars to be close enough to battle. Strategy is still important, so the pit wall will still have a part to play. It is still a sport of high maintenance. The driver still has a part to play though, even if it is less nowadays

Like a lot of fans you don't seem to understand that shortening lap times is have a negative affect on the sport and forcing drivers to do stupid things to overcome the problem. Why have a driver at all if he is leaving decisions to others, his tactical judgement used to be part of winning a race and not a proxy to hold a steering wheel and push buttons.

[S griffin]

I don’t think shortening lap times is a problem, although teams are very keen to maximise their strategy. The drivers are often at the mercy of what the teams want to do. Their impact has been lessened

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Casper

...Get rid of all the extraneous crap, give the driver a car and let's see who can manage the race best from the driver's seat without pit management...F1 is micro managed to a ridiculous degree and some of the control should be removed for the good of the sport.

Originally Posted by S griffin

...The drivers are often at the mercy of what the teams want to do. Their impact has been lessened

this might just be the one area where we all agree.

if the drivers had to work out more of the strategy for themselves, what laps times to aim for, when to pit for fresh rubber, which part of the track to engage at and when to hold back and without the aid of real time pit wall data simulations, then perhaps they could achieve the relative performance differences needed to affect close racing and passing in a more natural way.

given the modern tools available to increase a drivers preparedness level, lets see how well they have learned and with with so many races on the calendar, try it out at one or two races i say.

at this point, does the pit wall need to make racing at Barcelona easier for the drivers?