F1
Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor 6y

Lewis Hamilton: DRS is still a 'Band-Aid' for F1's biggest flaw

Formula 1

Lewis Hamilton made ten overtakes en-route to his fourth-place finish at the Brazilian Grand Prix, but he didn't like any of them.

While he used more parts of the track than most to pass the car in front, the majority of his overtakes came on the run down to Turn 1 with the help of his car's Drag Reduction System [DRS]. The DRS works by opening a flap in the rear wing, reducing drag and increasing top speed, but Hamilton sees it as an artificial solution for a much deeper problem in F1.

"Honestly, it didn't really feel like any one of my overtakes [in Brazil] were particularly special to me," he said after the race. "I'm not a big fan of DRS. While I think DRS enables overtaking, it's like a Band-Aid for the ultimate flaw in the whole concept of a Formula One car: that you can't follow.

"They were just about getting up close and using the DRS, which is not like go-karting when you have to get close and then manoeuvre. I guess the outside of Turn 1 [on Sergio Perez], I was quite happy about that but there wasn't any other highlighted overtaking manoeuvre that I did."

The drag reduction system has been in Formula One since 2011 and was introduced after a series of rule changes in 2009 failed to have the desired impact of increasing overtaking. Rule changes this year have made F1 cars even faster by increasing their dependence on aerodynamics, but in doing so the changes have made it even more difficult for drivers to follow each other through corners.

One possible solution is to reverse or mix grids so that faster cars are forced to work their way back through the field -- as Hamilton did on Sunday -- but with little overtaking among the top three cars at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Hamilton fears the fight for the win would still be stale.

"Interlagos is a race track where it's difficult to get past, but the delta is actually smaller than in other places. If you look at most of the circuits we go to, the delta to overtake the car in front is usually a second and a half or something like that. You have to be a second and a half faster and that's a whole tyre compound and a bit.

"That just shows there is obviously a weakness and a flaw in the cars' design, and while the cars are fantastic this year, that's an area we can improve on for the future. Reversing the grid, you didn't see the top four moving around, did you? So reversing the grid you would just reverse that and it would be the same."

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