Proposal for an intelligent DRS

[McMrocks]

Don't focus on the overtakes. Focus on the battle

The number of overtakes was the focus because fans were bored with seeing no on track action. That's not to say that there wasn't any action it was just that it was never shown on the TV. The issue is that the majority of fans only see the race on the TV. Historically the TV has shown one battle at a time and, in many cases, only showed the leader driving around. This was often boring. So the FIA et al tried to make it interesting by fiddling with the rules.

The answer is to take the broadcast rights away from Bernie / FOM and allow viewers to choose which battles they want to watch. That way they can watch the exciting battle for 14th or they can watch the less interesting stuff at the front as they wish. All of the rule changes brought in to increase overtaking and "the show" have failed to address the key issue - that viewers expect more than a single, sterile TV feed. Give the viewers the option to view what they want and people will be happy and will stay / return to the sport. This will never happen so long as FOM/Bernie/CVC are focussed on the 1990's TV model of delivery.

So all in all the decline of TV ratings is due to the FIA and (especially)FOM don't giving a f*ck about what the fans want?

Couldn't agree more

Regarding the bolted sentences: Not only historically. I remember a moment in last weekend's race where i wished the TV feed showed another battle. On the live timing i could see there were 3 cars within 1.5s (interval gaps were 0.7 and 0.8 ). The only problem: the battle was not for a top10 position.
So yes, sometimes the battles that aren't covered are more exciting than the ones covered.

[Just_a_fan]

And this could all be done with no increase in costs to the teams by way of rule changes. Just tell Bernie to allow full use of all of the feeds from all of the cars etc. Allow people to stream what they want - for a fee, of course. Of course, this would mean tearing up a whole load of contracts that Bernie has used to make money from the rights given to him by his old friend Max.

[strad]

So the FIA et al tried to make it interesting by fiddling with the rules.

Why fiddle with anything?
I have brought up the poor program direction and production many times.
Get somebody in the production booth that is interested in and knows something about racing and you're halfway there.. then get rid of the super long lenses and you'd have better coverage, a better sense of the speed and action and you wouldn't need gimmicks or fiddling with the rules.
People who only want to see passes and don't care about close hard fought action aren't F1 fans in the first place and I for one would rather they would go watch something else and quit trying to influence a sport/competition they don't really care about and are only aware of as some fad or to look at the so called "glamour. I sure don't care which pop star is in the pits or looking to get on camera.

[spadeflush]

Agreed!Bring back the old camera angles.

On topic, F1 doesnt need DRS at all. We have had a few races this year where there was pure racing with or without overtakes. Every single battle was 9.76 times better than any DRS overtake. F1 doesnt need more overtaking, it needs more racing.

[Dragonfly]

IMHO the single intelligent thing in a racing car should be the driver.

[feni_remmen]

Keep in mind that DRS was created to allow a faster car that was behind something of an advantage to trade off against the inherent disadvantage of following another car. I'm not sure it's played out like that and besides , in the Pirelli tyre era, we've seen most overtakes are due to relative tyre performances rather than DRS. With that in mind, I think as much as I have justified DRS, I think it probably robbed us of some great on track battles! Interesting idea to make it distance based though, especially as I've never liked it's limited use. As DRS is derided as artificial, I'd prefer they solved the aero interference issue. Removing the front wing would seem to be a start!

[FrukostScones]

Give every driver 10 anti-DRS for each race.

[dave kumar]

@feni_remmen

We may well have been robbed of some great action by DRS. However, for every battle we were robbed of because DRS made it too easy to pass there may well have been another battle that was joined because DRS made it possible for a car to stay close to another. We'll never know the answer to this. But a tweak to DRS to reduce the instances where it does allow an all too easy overtake, would be an improvement in my eyes.

If someone can convince them to reduce the aero sensitivity of the cars without turning it into a touring cars or something, then I'd abandon my ideas for wacky racers style boost, flaps or weird volatile sticky rubber laid down by the car being chased.

I guess I get excited when there are those magical moments when two cars are hustling each other on the track, lap after lap. There was a long period (1990s, 2000s ?) when this was a rare, rare event. I have to say we've been treated royally this year. Is it anything to do with DRS, I don't know the answer to that, so many things change in F1 year to year (the tyres being the biggest factor). Is DRS robbing us of some of these moments. Definitely. So we should either take it off or modify it.

[PlatinumZealot]

Pretty sure there are very simple, non visual ways of calculating the distance between two moving objects. But I like the idea, I think it would be better.

Using a driver mounted ocular light sensors, grey matter processors and digit actuation just might work. We already have the technology.

[iotar__]

Agreed!Bring back the old camera angles.

On topic, F1 doesnt need DRS at all. We have had a few races this year where there was pure racing with or without overtakes. Every single battle was 9.76 times better than any DRS overtake. F1 doesnt need more overtaking, it needs more racing.

??
DRS was present and used in every single race this season, hundreds and hundreds of times. I don't even want to know what your definition of pureness and racing is but 100% of 2014 was certainly "tainted" with DRS. Every second of every race, not to mention that strategy is planned with DRS/how easy it is to overtake in mind. It's not possible to extract some "pure" moments. Obligatory DRS overtaking influence:
- sometimes it's too easy - most drivers can overtake with DRS - not skills differentiator; some good influence: takes care of random elements in F1 duels, example: Alonso, Maldonado overtaking Raikkonen in Spain 2012, being stuck behind driver pitting later didn't interrupt their battle
- sometimes it's impossible - a lot of times
- sometimes it still takes all the skills to overtake with DRS - skills differentiator, while making it possible of course