For some teams, the removal of the fourth DRS zone made no immediate difference. But for others – notably Aston Martin – it led to some last minute scrabbling around to change the car set-up to suit, triggering a chain of events that led to a disastrous Saturday for the Silverstone team.
How the loss of the DRS zone came about was unusual to say the least, with some rivals suspecting that a clever piece of gamesmanship by Fernando Alonso had paid off to the benefit of the Alpine team.
The DRS zone in question was the one on a rebuilt part of the track, from Turn 8 to the kink at Turn 9. In Saturday’s drivers’ briefing Alonso suggested that with the DRS open this section of track was a little too dangerous for comfort, and that perhaps the zone should be abandoned on safety grounds. His was the main voice in the discussion with race director Niels Wittich, and by all accounts there was little in the way of contribution from other drivers.
Wittich took Alonso’s point on…
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