Anderson: How to solve F1's passing problem

Last week's AUTOSPORT magazine was an overtaking special, highlighting some of the greatest moves in Formula 1 history, the finest passers, and also looking at how the art of close racing has changed.

While passing moves are now prevalent with the Drag Reduction System, it's an innovation that has divided opinion, and GARY ANDERSON is among those who think something different is required.

The DRS potentially makes passing another car easier, but it is overall a negative to overtaking in so many ways.

Put yourself in the position of a driver. You're behind another car and have a pace advantage, so you know that all you need to do is be in the vicinity of the car in front at the DRS detection line. Then, provided you are close enough, you can make the move.

A proper old-school pass from Lewis Hamilton on Felipe Massa in Turkey in 2008 © XPB

The traditional method would be to try to pick up on small mistakes, the tiniest error from the driver in front, to allow you to attack. Or, you can do things to pressure them into making that mistake. But the DRS removes this.

The driver isn't always ready to seize on a chance to overtake anymore because he's waiting for the DRS zone to make the easy move. So you get plenty of passing in a grand prix, but not so much real overtaking, which is what we want to see.

THE PROBLEMS

The DRS itself is not at fault. Just take a look at the incredibly complex front wings of the cars.

All of the flow surfaces on those wings - cascades, turning vanes and endplates - are designed to work to the absolute maximum. By definition, the surface flow is at 99.9 per cent of what it can take.

So the second you get even the slightest turbulence, you suffer a huge loss of front wing effectiveness and front downforce.

And as the front wing sets up the airflow for the whole car, so you also lose downforce in the rest of the car. That adds up to a loss of probably 20-25 per cent of the overall downforce of the car, with more of that at the front end, proportionally.

That is what makes it so difficult to follow another car closely through corners - fast ones in particular - to be close enough to get a tow to attack on the straights and contest in the braking zone.

Front wing limitations now define what close racing is possible © XPB

It's all a question of too much aerodynamic sophistication. Everyone uses CFD and windtunnels to create packages that are extremely effective and efficient, but not robust enough to work when the airflow is disturbed. You then suffer airflow separation problems as a consequence of the turbulence.

Look at a front wing of a car from 25 years ago and it's far simpler. Comparing that to a current front wing, you don't have to be an aerodynamics expert to see why the modern designs are so much more sensitive.

The second factor is the braking efficiency of these cars, which is a consequence of the awesome downforce that you are creating.

It can brake at 100 metres and reduce the speed from over 300km/h to 50km/h for a corner, which is only about a second-and-a-quarter's worth of braking.

So let's say you are a car's length behind someone, which is pretty damned close in F1 terms. The cars are 4.5 metres long, so you have nine metres to make up before you're completely level.

David Coulthard passes Michael Schumacher the hard way at Magny-Cours in 2000 © LAT

You can't just brake 10 per cent later, and it's desperately unlikely that they're going to do you a favour and brake 10 per cent earlier. That's why you now have to get alongside on the straights and complete the pass with an outbraking move into the corner.

That's why the DRS is so beneficial, because it allows you to get alongside for the braking zone, or even pass them before it. But what you can't do is simply tow up behind a car, then pull off the pass in the braking zone.

The third factor is that the Pirelli tyres currently used are not exceptionally good in terms of in-line grip. That makes them very easy to lock up, and to suffer from wheelspin.

This means you have to be very careful on the brake pedal or you lock up.

The difficulty with overtaking is the sum of those problems. So what can F1 do about it?

THE SOLUTION

It would be easy enough to change the tyres. If F1 switched to similar rubber to the Bridgestones used up to 2010, you wouldn't have the same problem with locking up.

It's unnecessary to make the brakes themselves worse, because you can do this much more effectively by cutting the downforce.

Getting rid of aero has been the obvious solution to this problem for a long time. You could gather together a group of decent technical people who could wipe out 50 per cent of aerodynamic downforce in an afternoon.

Even passes started with DRS can be spectacular, as Daniel Ricciardo has often proved © XPB

Then, once you've done that, if you need to give the tyres even more grip, then you can make them wider.

The tyres won't have to be of such stiff construction because you aren't carrying the same downforce loads through them, and there is therefore more compliance. That means it will be much harder to lock up and damage the tyres, increasing the chances of late-braking moves.

With this increased mechanical grip, you should have a higher cornering speed at low speeds. While at high speed the car will be a bit slower, safety wise that's not a negative.

And if you wanted to restore some of that grip, the best way to do this would be with more underbody ground effect. This would only be necessary if the extra tyre grip was not available.

Were I involved in writing the rules, this would be the basic framework, although obviously it would need refinement.

You'd look at a less complex front wing, perhaps with only three or four elements allowed. These cleaner wings would be less sensitive and also look great, as the Red Bull and Ferrari front wings did at Monza.

The CDG wing never made it into reality

You could change the floor, move the diffuser kink point forward a reasonable amount and maybe bring the step at the outer sides of the floor back down again 25mm to help seal the floor.

I wouldn't go as far as bringing back skirts as that would increase the grip far too much.

It would be so straightforward to put together the basic building blocks for that rules package, then it's just a case of refining it.

Everybody talks about overtaking but nobody ever does anything, which is what I find frustrating.

What you need is a working group to sit down after every race, analyse the action and the televised product and understand what is good or bad for the fans and what can be done to improve things to make it into a better product.

The overtaking working group and their findings of five years ago didn't work. Then there was the CDG wing idea before that; needless to say it never saw the light of day.

How long does F1 have to talk about this problem before taking the obvious steps and cutting back the aerodynamics?

How can so many intelligent people have their heads buried so deep in the sand?