Overtaking will not be easy in 2011: Fernando Alonso
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso has claimed that overtaking will be as difficult in the 2011 season of Formula 1 as it was in the previous season.
In 2010, many drivers struggled to pass their opponents due to the new regulations brought in by the sport’s governing body, International Automobile Federation. (FIA) Like many other drivers, Alonso too struggled in the final Grand Prix of 2010 in Abu Dhabi
as he was unable to overtake the cars in front of him which cost him his third Formula 1 title.
The FIA had to take several measures in order to make racing more interesting in the next year. Many former drivers and experts criticised some regulations of the FIA and claimed that the sport was becoming dull.
To encourage overtaking, the FIA introduced adjustable rear wings and Kinetic Energy Recovery System for the 2011 season. However, Alonso said that even these will not help drivers to overtake.
Alonso stated that the adjustable rear wings will not be helpful considering the 600-metre zone limit.
He said, “It can be useful to overtake a car that is one or two seconds slower. Maybe the rule's objective is to favour an overtaking move when a race gets ruined by the impossibility of passing a much slower car, as happened to me with Petrov in Abu Dhabi.”
Alonso was not the only one to criticise the 600-metre zone limit. The technical director of Williams-Cosworth Sam Michael also claimed that this limit will not be useful.
He stated that the drivers will need longer straights in order to make the rear wings effective otherwise the story will be the same as it was in 2010.
KERS has been used in the past in order to boost overtaking but this technology also failed to impress the teams back in 2009.
However, things were slightly different back then as the cars using KERS had the disadvantage of carrying an extra weight with them. This year, the FIA has increased the minimum weight of the cars in order to make KERS effective.
FIA has already shown its intentions to increase the zone limit for the teams to use the rear wings more effectively. However, the sport’s governing body does not want to make overtaking too easy for the teams due to which a zone limit has been put in place.
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