Formula 1 is in a big crisis. Teams are on the verge of collapsing, while fans are complaining about the lack of noise and the lack of entertainment. Combined with the fact that drivers are continually saving fuel and managing their tires, this leads to fairly unspectacular and predictable races. According to a poll, last season the races were rated about as highly as in 2009, when Formula 1 was much less about ‘spicing up the show’. Have DRS and the rapidly-degrading Pirelli tires stopped producing interesting races?
Yes and no. The introduction of DRS and the switch to Pirelli tires have vastly increased the number of on-track overtakes, which is obviously a good thing, but it’s important to keep in mind that overtakes are not the only ingredient for a good race. Unpredictability, in the form of retirements or changeable weather conditions, as well as an interesting title battle, is greatly appreciated. However, the weather and the championship situation cannot be influenced, while reliability tends to improve as technological development creeps in. So Formula 1 tends to become less interesting as time goes by.
The overtaking stats show that the teams have also learnt to cope with the fragile Pirelli tires, as the number of overtakes have halved since 2011. Due to their simultaneous implementation it’s hard to estimate the individual contribution of DRS and rapidly-degrading tires on overtaking. Probably the best guess is that the contribution of DRS is very limited if tire strategies play a big role, but that its contribution becomes larger in case of more durable tires and limited strategic variation. Still, the net result is that more tire degradation leads to more overtakes and therefore tire-saving in combination with harder tires is likely the main reason why overtaking nowadays is less common than in 2011, even though double DRS zones have become commonplace.
The problem with DRS is that it was based on a pre-Pirelli mindset, when small speed differences between cars and marginal differences in tire wear made unassisted overtaking almost impossible. However, the multiple-pitstop races in the Pirelli era are quite different. The different tire strategies mix the field, especially during the pit window. Fast cars on fresh tires may find themselves behind slower cars on worn tires and their speed difference will usually be enough to overtake even without DRS. So, in most cases DRS is not only unnecessary, it also takes away any possible excitement from an overtake.
However, DRS can be very useful to create more overtakes between evenly-matched cars. For example, without DRS, it’s very likely that Rosberg comfortably would have won a few more races in 2014. It would be interesting to see the effect of DRS in a race format that is not dominated by tire strategies. Tires that are not designed to degrade (too much) will be a step in the right direction, but a possible drawback is that with rock-solid tires the strategic element is lost and that the races therefore will become more predictable than ever. Perhaps we need a different strategic element.
From time to time proposals to re-introduce refueling have surfaced. Last year the teams voted against it and last week they did exactly the same. The drawbacks are obvious: the costs increase, while safety may decrease. However, refueling in combination with high-performance tires may blend very well together with DRS:
• The biggest issue in the late 90s and early 00s was the lack of overtakes, which can (at least) partially be solved by DRS
• There will be fewer overtakes than in the current situation, but also fewer uninteresting overtakes (with very large speed differences), so then DRS can really make a difference
• DRS may encourage drivers to adapt their fuel strategy to overtake on track rather than in the pits (if the best way to make up places in the race is to start with a light car in order to gain as many places in the opening laps as possible), which would significantly enliven the early part of the race
At least refueling can make the races slightly less predictable as every driver will start on a more or less predefined race strategy, which would eliminate the boring reactive pit strategies we see nowadays. Refueling will also make the cars faster, while fuel (and with tires built to race instead of built to wear) and tire saving will be much less widespread. But the best thing is that refueling and DRS are likely to blend well together. All in all, there are some cons, but there are definitely a lot of pros, and therefore I think refueling is something Formula 1 should reconsider.
