What is behind Verstappen’s recurrent DRS problems

As the Red Bull driver battled to recover from an early off across a gravel trap, his attempts to find a way past George Russell were compromised by his DRS playing up and not working consistently.

The DRS deployment issues were a recurrence of those that arose during qualifying and prevented Verstappen from challenging Charles Leclerc for pole position in his final run.

This had prompted the team to make changes under parc ferme conditions ahead of the race to try to resolve the problem.

In the pre-race official FIA technical delegate’s report, which indicates what parts are changed on a like-for-like basis and without penalty, Red Bull opted to replace the DRS actuator and flap pivot pins on Verstappen’s RB18.

This was clearly not enough to fully resolve the problem and suggests the issue goes beyond just a single item failing.

Indeed, as this exclusive photograph shows, the problem does not seem to just revolve solely around the actuator mechanism. It appears the team was concerned with stress related cracks or fractures that they may have found during their checks of the wing after qualifying.

As such, there’s a large section of the upper flap that’s been subject to a fix, with the sponsor decals reapplied before the car made its way to the grid.

Interestingly enough, while Perez hadn’t suffered the issue in qualifying and didn’t have the DRS actuator or pivots replaced ahead of the race, they did apply the same fixes to his rear wing’s upper flap.

The DRS issue has similarities to the problems faced by the team towards the end of last season.

However, what remains unclear if it’s the mechanism that causing a stress induced failure of the flap, or vice versa.

Speaking after the Spanish GP race, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner suggested the issue revolved around the team making things too lightweight in this area of the car, with potentially a more flexible wing being…