Official

Remove DRS?

I would like to raise an issue with the current behavior of DRS (which is often inconsistent) and how cars interact in groups. At the moment, the game creates situations where fundamental racing principles are either missing or not working correctly. In particular, the effect of dirty air is barely noticeable. As a result, groups of cars running within DRS range consistently end up being faster than a single leader. This completely ignores the fact that battling, braking errors, lock-ups, and running in traffic should all lead to time loss over a lap. Instead, the opposite happens - the group does not lose time but actually gains an advantage, which feels more like road cycling than motorsport.
A similar issue occurs when two evenly matched cars are running at the front within one second of each other. Technically, they are in a constant battle, which should reduce their pace, but in practice this does not happen. On every lap, one of them is able to use DRS, which leaves almost no chance for other cars to close the gap. Moreover, they can comfortably save their boost for the final lap. In reality, both drivers should be losing time while fighting, while a chasing car running in clean air should be able to reduce the gap.
In my opinion, the core problem is that the system currently includes a bonus in the form of DRS but lacks any balancing factors. There is no time loss from battling, so the mechanic works in only one direction. A more logical approach would be that clean air provides maximum pace, while running in dirty air and engaging in direct battles should result in small time losses.
At the same time, this would significantly increase the importance of the manager’s involvement during the race. It would require timely use of boost, active push level management, and strategic decision-making - whether to drop back to save resources for a later attack or to try and break away from the chasing car. Ultimately, this would give the manager more control over the race.
I apologize if my explanation isn’t perfect, but I would like to see a system that makes races more logical and strategic, rather than dependent on inconsistent DRS behavior.