Your Reject of the Race - Germany

[girry]

it is clearly artificial and unfair towards the defending driver.

Well, you could say it's unfair for the attacking driver that he has to drive in an invisible hurricane which the defending car sprouts, and where his aero stops working.

Even if it's a bit artificial, the DRS just makes the game slightly more even - or how often do you see the driver who gets overtaken "unfairly" get the place back because of DRS? The odds are still in the favor of the car ahead, regardless of DRS.

[SgtPepper]

it is clearly artificial and unfair towards the defending driver.

Well, you could say it's unfair for the attacking driver that he has to drive in an invisible hurricane which the defending car sprouts, and where his aero stops working.

Surely in reality both are true? Although I mostly love the current regs, I also wouldn't complain if they continued to strip aero off the cars. But I'm going to have to go with Freezy on this one (though not on nominating Hamilton on very a good, if slightly clumsy drive) - the detriments of DRS still seem to drastically outweigh the benefits, don't forget we're yet to get to the tilke-drome part of the year when things get ridiculous.

Although there's the occasional race where DRS helps following cars close up a little (helped in Hungary last year quite well IIRC), for every one time it's been slightly advantageous, I can list off a few dozen overtakes where it's allowed the following driver to simply fly past with no difficulty. This is why KERS is such a great system - it still gives drivers something extra, but brings in both skills and tactics.

[girry]

Yeah it's true that some of the passing easily gets ridiculously easy with DRS, but most often those easy passes are in situations where the attacking driver is a ridiculous lot faster in clean air anyway and disappears in the distance within a lap. Generally speaking: without DRS we would have our battles in this kind of situations yes, however without it we wouldn't have battles where we currently have them, that is when the driver behind is a bit faster but, without DRS, can't really get close enough to attack.

Obviously the core problem with F1 is that you can't ever have a battle with two cars roughly similarly paced (and thus a recreation of Gilles vs Arnoux at Dijon or Keke vs Gilles at Long Beach can't happen since once pass is "completed", it won't be countered) but that won't be fixed without stripping off the aero, etc.

[SgtPepper]

Yeah it's true that some of the passing easily gets ridiculously easy with DRS, but most often those easy passes are in situations where the attacking driver is a ridiculous lot faster in clean air anyway and disappears in the distance within a lap. Generally speaking: without DRS we would have our battles in this kind of situations yes, however without it we wouldn't have battles where we currently have them, that is when the driver behind is a bit faster but, without DRS, can't really get close enough to attack.

Obviously the core problem with F1 is that you can't ever have a battle with two cars roughly similarly paced (and thus a recreation of Gilles vs Arnoux at Dijon or Keke vs Gilles at Long Beach can't happen since once pass is "completed", it won't be countered) but that won't be fixed without stripping off the aero, etc.

Again agree about stripping off of aero, but I'd argue that there have been a lot more easy overtakes than you think, possibly because by definition they're so forgettable - though I may also just have a different level of what constitutes easy/dull to you. Also agree that it's great seeing battles between two relatively equal cars, and you are right that DRS may help these cars get closer together, but I'd also rather see much slower cars being able to fight and defend intelligently against faster ones as well.

Couldn't you argue that (ironically in light of the last few years) it's actually decreased the importance of tyre strategy that was able to help slower cars, with skilled drivers extend their tyre life and fight off superior machinery? Plus DRS just means the relatively equal cars will end up switching places a few times before one's tyres go off - and surely there are examples of longer winded battles in the modern formula where DRS wasn't entirely influential/necessary?