Former champion Niki Lauda thrashes Drag Reduction System in Formula 1
Former Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda has said that the introduction of Drag Reduction System is baseless as he believes that overtaking should be dependant on the driver’s talent rather than new “pointless” devices.
Lauda recently stated that the International Automobile Federation (FIA) should try to go a “step further than a review” and get rid of this system.
“The wing is the most stupid idea. Overtaking should be done by the drivers themselves and decided by them and not by the FIA with green lights in the cockpit telling them to fold their wings down or up. I would never have introduced this. It is certainly
the most crazy idea ever invented,” he said.
The DRS was introduced in the opening race of the 2011 Formula 1 season that took place in Australia recently. The debut of the system was not as good as the FIA had expected since most of the teams did not look very happy about the idea of an “overtaking
zone.”
FIA race director Charlie Whiting has recently stated that the governing body is going to analyse the effectiveness of the DRS after the Chinese Grand Prix.
However, it seems that Red Bull Racing team have produced the most reliable car so far as their RB7 is more than 7 tenths faster than the rest of the cars on the grid.
Sebastian Vettel was able to finish the Australian GP more than 22 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton of McLaren who finished in 2nd place.
Despite the introduction of DRS, the Australian GP did not witness many overtakes. Other than that, most of the overtakes throughout the race were mainly due to a mistake committed by one of the drivers involved in the overtaking battle.
Most of the critics believe that the drivers’ skills should be put to the test rather than giving them new gadgets to make their life easy on the track. Let’s see if this happens in the second grand prix of the season in Malaysia.
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