Baku has been known for a lot of action thanks to its mix of tight turns and long straights, but the Grand Prix and the sprint race of the Azerbaijan GP weekend proved to be a rather dull affair, with a general lack of overtakes. While one of the causes for this was that the new cars don’t generate as much of a slipstream as the pre-2022 cars, the drivers blamed the shortened main-straight DRS zone for the rather boring weekend.
Speaking to Autosport about the new DRS zone which has been shortened by 100 metres, Hamilton said, “Nothing went wrong but I just wanted more power. A driver always wants more power. And I think ultimately they shortened the DRS this year down the straight, I don't quite know why they did that. We've always had great racing where the DRS was. By the time you switched the DRS on, it was too late.”
Alex Albon also added, “You saw it, there wasn't much overtaking, the DRS was too short. I think they showed that last year it wasn't in a bad place, and they took 100 [metres] off it. You could maybe go another 100. The drivers did speak about this in the drivers' briefing on Friday. These cars, as the load is coming onto the cars, they're getting harder to follow now, not as good as it was before [in 2022]. And then the slipstream hasn't been as good as the previous year's cars. That's why you're seeing this DRS train.”
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Albon’s Formula 2 rival Lando Norris spent most of the race stuck behind Esteban Ocon and Nico Hulkenberg who stopped late and couldn’t take advantage of his fresher tyres. He was also frustrated by the shorter DRS zone. “It's pretty much impossible to overtake especially with our straight-line speed. Not with how short the DRS zone is now [compared] to where it was last year. I did the best I could to try and keep up with the cars ahead. I just used the tyres up too much, because we're not on the same level,” he said.
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On the other hand, Alpine’s sporting director Alan Permane defended the FIA decision to shorten the DRS zone. “You have to be very careful when you're talking about things like that and who you're asking because if you're in the front, you don't want any DRS zones. And if you've got a quicker race car than a qualifying car, you want longer DRS zones. So I think those things are best left to the FIA to judge on their data. And that's of course what happens. They have a performance department, they look at things. I think they looked back at last year and felt overtaking was a little bit easy. And that's why they shortened it.”
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With most of the drivers standing against the reduced DRS zone and the older ones not posing any safety threat, it could be safe to assume that FIA will revert to the older length for the upcoming years. But we’ll have to wait for a year and see if that is enough to reignite the action on the streets of Baku.
