Lewis Hamilton has slammed the FIA’s decision to add a third DRS zone at Silverstone which is leaving open the possibility to take Turns 1 and 2 flat-out with the rear wing open.
Friday saw the drivers begin to assess the possibility of entering Abbey with DRS active and though some early attempts from Max Verstappen were successful, it was a crash for Romain Grosjean which was most notable.
The preferred method by the end was to manually close the wing on the approach before re-opening on the exit but, as Grosjean explained, even that presents a challenge.
“The car was fast this morning and I closed the DRS a bit too late on that lap,” he admitted. “The airflow didn’t recover and I lost the rear end.”
For Hamilton though, seeing the Haas go off was vindication for a stance he took with Formula 1’s governing body in the drivers briefing.
“I was like, ‘Ron, you should tell [race director] Charlie Whiting, someone’s going to crash’ because the speeds we go into Turn 1 are insane,” he said.
“And what happened today? I was like, ‘told you’.”
Sebastian Vettel also revealed reservations about the Abbey DRS and for the Mercedes driver, the whole concept has little merit.
“It’s just kind of not necessary really to have it through there,” he claimed. “I mean, we’re all managing, but if someone sticks [with DRS at Turn 1] in qualifying, they’re going to crash – so that’s kind of why it’s an unnecessary danger.
“We used to have DRS everywhere [in practice and qualifying] and we had to engage [it] and take off, and they stopped us from doing that because people were spinning off.”