F1 News: Former Driver Calls For FIA To Make Controversial Change

Former F1 driver Jan Lammers has called for the FIA to make a huge change.

Jan Lammers, a former Dutch Formula One racer, has called for the FIA to make a huge change to make racing more interesting.

DRS (the Drag Reduction System) was brought into the sport in 2011 in order to enable more overtaking within races. However, Lammers argues that it means drivers do not have to fight as much for overtakes and claims that removing it would mean they are forced to be more creative. 

Speaking following the Canadian Grand Prix last weekend, Lammers touched on a particular overtake from Oscar Piastri on his McLaren teammate Lando Norris which he claimed was "beautiful". He said during an appearance on the NOS Formula 1 podcast:

"DRS I think is wrong. I think this is a great era to abolish DRS altogether. Then drivers have to find another way to overtake each other again. We saw Oscar Piastri on Sunday overtaking Lando Norris in a beautiful and a creative way. If you do that once, others will also be told you can overtake there.

"The people who have switched since the arrival of Max Verstappen, they don't know any better. Then people say, 'How do you overtake then?' Think about that for a moment. That's the trick. Abolish the DRS and figure out how to overtake."

The issue with removing DRS is that it was put in place to increase the overtaking opportunity of F1 cars. These modern cars produce so much dirty air despite the new regulations introduced in 2022 which tried to mitigate this. This means that when cars follow closely, close enough to overtake, they suffer from reduced downforce and aerodynamic inefficiencies. I believe it's fair to say that if you removes DRS from all the circuits in the season, drivers would find it incredibly difficult to make places and in some tracks, such as Monaco and Azerbaijan, it would be near impossible.