|
As regards the title... DRS didn't give Hamilton that win. Good driving and excellent tire preservation did. All it did, really, was enable him to pass Fernando Alonso a bit more easily... as Alonso's car didn't have the grip (cold tires) or pace to keep the McLaren at bay.
-
It isn't just DRS that enables passing.
A lot of the variability this season comes from the fact that the current tires are "fragile"... in other words, they grain easily, flat-spot easily and lose grip easily.
Easily compared to the previous Bridgestones, mind you... that some drivers can complete races on just two sets of tires points to the fact that these aren't terribly ineffective tires... but the need to balance wear against pace makes for a wide variety of strategies... some of which work. Some don't.
In Canada, the winner did a two stop / three stint run, whereas second and third did a one stop / two stint run. Another one stop / two stint driver almost won, but his tires "fell off the cliff" several laps before the end... and another, who was in second, had to make a last minute pitstop, but still ended up fourth.
They don't even need the DRS or DRS restrictions. I think they should just let the drivers use them whenever they want... as this makes for better fuel economy, too. KERS is similarly restricted. There's a strict limit to KERS output and how many seconds of boost you can use per lap. If they'd removed that, the amount of kinetic energy harvested per lap could give them several to a dozen more seconds of boost... and even better economy.
2014 will be a big year for F1, as they switch to 1.5 liter turbocharged V6s.... lowering fuel consumption even more. Hopefully, they'll pair them with even bigger KERS batteries to keep single-lap pace similar.
-
Some might say that all this focus on fuel-consumption in-race is merely greenwashing... and considering the huge amount of fuel used in F1 logistics... transporting two-to-three cars per team and their huge trailers of equipment from country to country takes much more fuel than the cars will ever use on the track... that's somewhat true...
But fuel economy matters in racing. Red Bull Racing have won the past two years partially because they have the most economical engine on the grid, which allows them to run lighter fuel loads and a much lighter, faster and nimbler car.
Errh... they also run lighter because they have a much smaller KERS unit than other front-runners, but until the FIA allow unlimited KERS use per lap, there's no reason for the teams to run anything bigger.
|