During this year’s race in Miami, drivers seemed to prefer overtaking into Turn 11 rather than the tight Turn 17 at the end of the long 1.3km back straight.
Before this straight, there’s a tricky section on the road that goes under the highway, which made the cars spread out by the time they reached Turn 16. This made it hard for drivers to gain ground with the DRS (Drag Reduction System) into the final corners.
Stella thinks that the time lost following a car through those corners is more than the time gained with DRS. DRS can only be used just before halfway down the next straight.
“I thought overtaking would be a bit easier, so I was surprised it was so hard,” Stella said. “The DRS zone seems a bit too short because you don’t have enough time to catch up with the car in front. Most of the time you lose is in the slow part of the track. Even in the fast part, there are two areas before the long straight where you lose too much time to catch up.”
Stella said that making the DRS zone longer next year would be an easy way to fix this. But she also worries that the current cars are becoming harder to follow.
The 2022 rules were meant to make it easier for cars to follow each other in corners and make racing more exciting. But last season, some people were worried that changes were making this effect weaker.
“Extending the DRS zone is an easy fix, but it also shows that the cars are becoming harder to follow again,” Stella said. “It’s not as bad as before with the old cars, but it’s still harder than we thought it would be with these new cars.”
Mike Krack, the boss of the Aston Martin team, said that Miami’s track makes it easy for “DRS trains” to form. This is when a line of cars can’t pass each other because the second car can’t get enough of a DRS boost over the car in front.
“To pass, you need to be really close to the car in front and use all your energy to make the pass work,” Krack explained. “We knew it would be tough, especially with some cars like the Alpine, which struggle on the straight against cars like the Williams.”
