Gary Anderson: Why I hate DRS in F1

The DRS - or, as I like to call it, the Driver Retirement System - is my most hated aspect of current Formula 1.

At some tracks, it makes overtaking far too easy, but at Barcelona this was not so. Lewis Hamilton could not get close enough to Sebastian Vettel to attempt to pass him, while Kimi Raikkonen had the same problem when behind Valtteri Bottas.

Even with the DRS, it was not easy to pass. And the reason for this is incredibly simple.

Turn 9 and the final corner, which precede the two DRS activation zones at Barcelona, are highly aerodynamically dependent corners. To be able to use the DRS, you need to be within a second of the driver in front of you.

If you follow a car within a second around either of these two corners, the turbulence coming off the driver in front means that you lose around 20 per cent of your downforce, mainly from the front wing.

So the car understeers and slides around more, leading to the tyres overheating, which leads to less grip and more sliding. Basically, it's a spiralling effect.

There is a simple cure for this: namely, a much less sophisticated front wing and an improved underfloor.

This would achieve many things:

GP2 now has DRS, but there was still overtaking when it stopped working © LAT

1 It would mean that the drivers could race each other on the track without destroying their tyres.

2 The front wing assembly, which is one of the biggest areas of car development, would be dramatically reduced in cost.

3 We see many front-wing assemblies destroyed by a simple touch on a rear tyre. These replacement components would be a lot cheaper.

4 It would also mean the top teams with their huge aerodynamic budgets would not be able to outspend the smaller teams on this single component.

5 Last but not least, we just might see cars racing enough to allow some overtaking on track as opposed to during a different pit strategy.

I am sure that there is not much appetite from the FIA or any of the teams to make these changes, but if anyone needs proof that a less sophisticated front wing would work, just watch the first GP2 race at Barcelona.

While GP2 does have the DRS, it was not working for a big part of the Saturday race and we still saw cars following closely and overtaking.

There's a lesson in that for F1 - if anyone is actually willing to learn it.

THE DEVELOPMENT WAR

Major pre-Spain development efforts made little difference to form © XPB

As the first European race, and with a three-week gap since the Bahrain Grand Prix, Spain is always the event when everybody turns up with boxes of new bits. So what changed?

Well, nothing.

Mercedes, in reality, walked it. Ferrari continued to be the next best followed by Williams, then the usual ducking and diving of the midfield and then McLaren fighting... no one.

Barcelona is a track where downforce, or rather efficient and consistent downforce, is vital. That is what all these teams spend millions of man-hours and dollars to try to produce.

So why isn't it a case of just do your research, design your bits, make your bits, bolt them on the car and go faster?

Well, if it was that simple I would probably still be doing it.

The development process starts with having to recognise why your car won't go faster.

If the driver is happy with what he has and the balance and grip is consistent through the high and medium-speed corners, then you head out looking for more overall downforce.

But it's very important to keep an eye on the aerodynamic characteristics and try to match them as closely as possible to what you had before you started your development programme.

Ferrari's new package raised plenty of questions © XPB

It is very easy - and I mean very easy - to gain overall downforce but upset the consistency of that aerodynamic load and actually go slower.

We see this all the time and all it does is lead to a lot of head-scratching and wasted money and time on those latest batches of new bits.

If the balance of the car is inconsistent then the first thing is to try to research things in a different way to try to find a reason and a set of numbers that highlight that inconsistency.

If you don't or can't do this then you can develop until you are blue in the face and you will just get more and more confused because you will be throwing all these bits at the car with no gains.

Take Ferrari, for example. It actually said that it had changed something like 90 per cent of the aerodynamic surface.

In reality, it made more or less no difference and the confusion led to Raikkonen changing his car back to an 'inbetween' spec. There's nothing so confusing for a team - now which way does it go?

I felt before Barcelona that Ferrari would close the gap to Mercedes by a couple of tenths but it was not so. Prior to Barcelona, Mercedes had around 0.8 seconds per lap advantage and in Barcelona qualifying Vettel was 0.777s slower than Rosberg.

In the race he was 45s behind at the chequered flag. Per lap, that is a deficit of 0.681s. Remember Barcelona is a shorter laptime than the first four races...

As some teams struggle, Toro Rosso is impressing © LAT

For me, all that leads to no measurable improvement for Ferrari so it is back to the drawing board. But now it is even tougher because the question of 'why' looms very high in any discussion relative to the development direction.

I think Mercedes went through the pain of this lack of understanding prior to 2014.

For example, in 2013 it had a quick car but it ate up its rear tyres. It didn't intend to build a car to do this but it was happening, so it spent a lot of time and effort in looking at why.

Mercedes obviously got a handle on why and now, as in 2014, it has a car that is quick on all circuits. I think it is a little harder on the rear tyres than it was last year, but all the teams are suffering with this problem, and five races in it has won four of them so it has a reasonable compromise.

Behind the top teams, I suppose Toro Rosso is the one in that midfield pack that is impressive this season.

It has done a good job with the Renault engine, especially in qualifying. I believe it is the engine problems - or potential for problems - that mean the Toro Rossos drop off on race day.

In McLaren's case, everything is just that little bit worse than at Ferrari. It is dicing with, at very best, the back of the midfield teams. McLaren talks about the car being better but I haven't seen it yet.