Lewis Hamilton: DRS will not affect rate of overtaking at Monaco Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
The 2008 Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton has said that the Drag Reduction System is not going to be very effective at the Monaco Grand Prix as it will not affect the rate of overtaking much.
The DRS has been more successful as compared to the Kinetic Energy Recovery System as most of the overtaking in the first five races of the 2011 Formula 1 season took place in the respective DRS zones of each circuit.
However, that might not be the case in Monte Carlo since it would probably have the shortest DRS zone of the year.
“I think the DRS zone at Monaco is only around 300 metres [it was 830 metres in Spain], so it's pretty short, and not really long enough to enable us to really get enough of a launch on the car ahead,” he said.
The pit straight near the start/finish line of the Monaco circuit is going to be the DRS zone where the drivers can go around 165mph before hitting the brakes near turn 1.
As a result, Hamilton believes that there is not going to be much overtaking in the DRS zone this weekend.
“I think the aerodynamics will only really start working properly once we've reached the braking zone for Sainte Devote, so I don't think we'll see too many DRS-assisted overtaking moves next weekend,” said Hamilton.
Nevertheless, he added that saving the tyres throughout the race is going to be crucial in order to succeed on Sunday during the race. The McLaren driver thinks that the race strategy is going to be vital for each team and that the soft or supersoft tyres
are not going to be as crucial as they were in Turkey.
Since Monaco is a low-speed track, the degrading debris of the tyres is not going to be as fearful as people think it is. The tyres are going to play a major role throughout the weekend and the teams will be hoping to make the best of their strategies in
order to achieve the best possible results.
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