Shorter DRS zone made overtaking harder at Catalunya

Lewis Hamilton said the decision to shorten a DRS zone at the Circuit de Catalunya made overtaking harder for drivers in the race.

The activation point for the DRS zone on the pit straight was moved 100 metres further away from the final corner compared to last year.

The Mercedes driver nonetheless managed to pass Carlos Sainz Jnr into turn one with what his team principal Toto Wolff described as one of “the best overtakes I’ve seen in a long time.”

“They shortened the DRS, so it was not so easy to follow through the last corner,” Hamilton told the official F1 channel. “I really had to pull this move off as early as possible.

“He moved over, but didn’t completely cover the inside, so I went for the inside. It was very, very close between us, he tried to hold and stay on the outside, I left him a little bit of room, but it was nice and tight.”

The FIA experimented with shortening DRS zones at some tracks early last year but halted the practice following complaints from some drivers. In the third year of F1’s current technical regulations, drivers have increasingly warned following other cars is becoming more difficult due to the turbulence they produce.

Lando Norris said this prevented him from attacking George Russell during the first stint after Max Verstappen passed the Mercedes.

“There’s so much dirty air,” said Norris. “The first three laps of a stint, you can [attack] because the tyres are so good. So at the beginning of a stint, I was good and I could, but that was Max’s opportunity to get past George, he did that.

“After, the tyres just get so hot, you just can’t do different lines, and you can’t go out of the dirty air and cut back and things like that. So there was nothing else I could have done. It was just as simple as everyone kind of falls in line a little bit.”

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2024 Spanish Grand Prix

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