In Monaco before Christmas, Formula 1′s governing body held a meeting to discuss one of the key and most controversial aspects of 2011 – the Drag Reduction System or DRS.

Introduced amid much controversy and no small amount of trepidation in some quarters, questions about the validity of the overtaking aid, not to mention the wisdom of employing it, decreased during the season. So much so that, at the Monaco meeting, it was decided that only small refinements needed to be made to its use for the 2012 campaign.

But while the FIA and the teams all agree that DRS has played a valuable role in improving F1 as a spectacle, they are determined to ensure it performs in the way intended. In particular, no-one wants to cheapen one of the central aspects of a driver’s skill by making overtaking too easy.

Sebastian Vettel enters the DRS zone at the Spanish Grand Prix. Photo: Getty

To recap briefly, DRS was introduced in an attempt to solve the perennial problem of there being too little overtaking. After years – decades even – of discussions, F1′s technical brains hit on what they thought could be a solution: DRS.

DRS does what it says on the tin. When deployed, the top part of the rear wing moves upwards, reducing drag and giving a boost in straight-line speed. In races, drivers could use it only if they were within a second of the car in front at a “detection point” shortly before the “DRS zone”. The DRS zone was where DRS could be deployed, which was usually the track’s longest straight.

The idea was to make overtaking possible but not too easy.

There is no doubt that racing improved immeasurably as a spectacle in 2011 compared with previous seasons. But how big a role did DRS play? And did overtaking become too easy at some tracks and remain too hard at others?

It is a more complex issue than it at first appears because it is not always easy to tell from the outside whether an overtaking move was a result of DRS or not.

In Turkey and Belgium, for example, several drivers sailed past rivals in the DRS zone long before the end of it, leading many to think the device had made overtaking too easy.

But, armed with statistics, FIA race director Charlie Whiting says appearances were deceptive. What was making overtaking easy at those two races, he said, was the speed advantage of the car behind as the two cars battling for position came off the corner before the DRS zone.

Whiting showed me a spreadsheet detailing the speeds of the respective cars in all the overtaking manoeuvres that happened in the Belgian GP.

“This shows very clearly that when the speed delta [difference] between the two cars at the beginning of the zone is low, then overtaking is not easy,” he said. “But if one car goes through Eau Rouge that bit quicker, sometimes you had a speed delta of 18km/h (11mph). Well, that’s going to be an overtake whether you’ve got DRS or not.”

According to Whiting, the statistics show that if the two cars come off the corner into the DRS zone at similar speeds, then the driver behind needs to be far closer than the one-second margin that activates the DRS if he is to overtake.

“One second is the activation but that won’t do it for you,” Whiting said. “You’ve got to be 0.4secs behind to get alongside into the braking zone.”

Confusing the picture in 2011 – particularly early in the season – was the fast-wearing nature of the new Pirelli tyres, which led to huge grip differences between cars at various points of the races. A driver on fresher tyres would come off a corner much faster and brake that much later for the next one. That would have a far greater impact on the ease of an overtaking move than DRS ever would.

Critics of DRS might argue that while it may be useful at tracks where overtaking has traditionally been difficult, like Melbourne, Valencia and Barcelona, for example, it is debatable whether there is a need for it at circuits where historically there has been good racing, like Turkey, Belgium and Brazil.

According to Whiting, DRS does not diminish the value of an overtaking move at tracks where it is usually easy to pass. It just means that DRS opens up the possibility for more. In other words, it works just as it does at any other track.

McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe is an influential member of the Technical Working Group of leading engineers which came up with DRS. He said people had been arguing for years that engineers should alter the fundamental design of cars to facilitate overtaking.

However, tinkering with aerodynamic design was never going to be a solution, according to Lowe, because F1 cars will always need downforce to produce such high performance, and that means overtaking will always, by the cars’ nature, be difficult.

“What’s great [about DRS is] at least we can move on from this debate of trying to change the aerodynamic characteristics of cars to try to improve overtaking,” added Lowe.

“We’ve found something much more authoritative, much cheaper, easier and more effective, and adjustable from race to race.”

Whiting thinks DRS worked as expected everywhere except Melbourne and Valencia.

Valencia’s DRS zone could be extended for 2012. Photo: Getty 

So for next season’s opening race in Australia, he is considering adding a second DRS zone after the first chicane, so drivers who have used DRS to draw close to rivals along the pit straight can have another crack at overtaking straight afterwards. As for Valencia, traditionally the least entertaining race of the year, the FIA will simply make the zone, which is located on the run to Turn 12, longer.

There is potentially one big negative about DRS, though.

There is a risk that its introduction could mean the end of races in which a driver uses his skills to hold off a rival in a faster car. Some of the greatest defensive victories of the modern age have been achieved in this way. One thinks of Gilles Villeneuve holding off a train of four cars in his powerful but poor-handling Ferrari to win in Jarama in 1981, or Fernando Alonso fending off Michael Schumacher’s faster Ferrari at Imola in 2005.

The idea behind the introduction of DRS was for a much faster car to be able to overtake relatively easily but for passing still to be difficult between two cars of comparative performance. In theory, if that philosophy is adhered to rigidly, the sorts of races mentioned above will still be possible.

However, once an aid has been introduced that gives the driver behind a straight-line speed advantage that is an incredibly difficult line to walk, as Whiting himself admits. “You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth to a certain extent,” he said.

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Ferrari have apparently proceeded to a second name tweak for their 2011 F1 challenger, following the controversy surrounding the initial designation of the car back in January. According to the ?Horse Whisperer? column ? an online interface commonly used by Ferrari to share its likes and dislikes with the world ? the new name of the racer will be Ferrari 150° Italia.

?It might seem like a Kafkaesque scenario, but the affair relating to the name of the car with which Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will tackle this year’s Formula 1 World Championship saw its final and decisive episode played out these past few days with the concomitant withdrawal by Ford of the summons. Therefore common sense has prevailed,? wrote the columnist.

The car?s initial name was Ferrari F150, but in mid-February was changed to F150th Italia as a result of the legal proceedings issued by American carmaker Ford to the US District Court in Detroit.

Ford-F150-Pickup

This situation occurred because Ferrari?s car name and logo resembled Ford?s trademark for their line of pick-up trucks, the famous F-150. A couple of days back, Ford announced it has filed a notice with the US court for dismissal of the case, after it had reached an amicable agreement with their Italian counterparts.

In order to avoid the slightest risk of anyone confusing a Formula 1 car with a pick-up truck, for their part, the men from Maranello have decided that the car will lose the F that precedes the number 150 and which stands for Ferrari, as it has done on numerous occasions when it’s come to giving a car a code name, be it for the race track or the road

It appears that this could have caused so much confusion in the minds of the consumer across the Pond that, at the same time as losing the F, the name will be completely Italianised, replacing the English ‘th’ with the equivalent Italian symbol.

Therefore the name will now read as the Ferrari 150° Italia, which should make it clear even to the thickest of people that the name of the car is a tribute to the anniversary of the unification of our country.

Let’s hope the matter is now definitely closed and that we can concentrate on more serious matters, namely ensuring that our car that already seems to be pretty good out of the box, becomes a real winner.

- The Horse Whisperer

Original article by Ovidiu Panzariu of autoevolution

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As a potential second plug-in-hybrid offering, Volvo has announced it will unveil the XC60 Plug-in Hybrid Concept at the 2012 North American International Auto Show in Detroit next week.

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Formula 1 always goes a little quiet over Christmas, but one team that has been making waves – both publicly and behind the scenes – are Williams.

The team that dominated F1 for much of the 1980s and 1990s are one of only two outfits still with an obvious vacancy in their driver line-up – the other being back-of-the-grid HRT.

And it seems that Rubens Barrichello, the veteran who has driven for the team for the last two seasons, is back in with a chance of staying with them for 2012.

Rubens Barrichello had been tipped to vacate his Williams seat. Photo: Getty

Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado is staying on in one of the cars after an up-and-down rookie season in 2011 – his position in the team is secure thanks to a multi-million sponsorship deal with his country’s national oil company.

But the second seat is still up for grabs, and while Williams are not the attractive proposition they were in their glory days, they are the only decent choice for a whole host of drivers wishing to continue their F1 careers.

These include Barrichello, German Adrian Sutil, Brazilian Bruno Senna, Toro Rosso rejects Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi and Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Sutil, who had an impressive second half of the season for Force India, has been the favourite for some time, but the situation appears to have shifted recently.

My sources tell me that Barrichello, who appeared to be out of the running as his 19th season in F1 drew to a close in November, has come back into the frame and now has a reasonable chance of a Williams drive in 2012.

Barrichello has been arguing for some time that, with the huge ructions going on at Williams through 2011 and over the winter, it would make sense to have a known reference in the drivers.

“With all the changes for next year on the engine side and engineers,” he said at the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix, “it would be clever from the team to keep the drivers and keep on going. I’m not pushing them, I’m just trying to show them that is the way to do it.”

You can see his point. The team are changing engine suppliers, replacing Cosworth with Renault, and have undergone a wholesale restructure of the design department, with a new technical director, head of aerodynamics and head of engineering.

New tech boss Mike Coughlan is admired as being very clever, but his last role as a technical director was with the now-defunct Arrows team, who collapsed in 2002. As chief designer of McLaren after that, he was involved in the spy-gate scandal that engulfed the team in 2007 and for which he was sacked.

The technical changes at Williams were made even more seismic when it emerged on New Year’s Eve that not only was co-founder Patrick Head stepping down as director of engineering, he was also resigning his position on the F1 team’s board, thereby cutting all his ties with the sport.

It had long been known that Head, one of the most respected engineers in the history of the sport, would no longer have an active role in the day-to-day F1 operation, but it was a surprise to hear he was not going to be on the board of directors.

Head has insisted that his decision to end his day-to-day F1 role was based on feeling his relevance in F1 was diminishing.

In Brazil, he said: “I certainly didn’t have an ambition to stop my involvement in Formula One with a season like this last one we’ve had behind us.

“But when I have a look at what specifically I can do to assist Mike Coughlan and (chief operations officer) Mark Gillan and (head of aerodynamics) Jason Somerville, I came to the conclusion that it isn’t really enough to justify me carrying on doing the same thing.”

He will still be involved at Williams through their subsidiary company Williams Hybrid Power and remains close to team boss Sir Frank Williams, who will doubtless be turning to him for advice on a regular basis.

All the same, many will consider it unwise that a team in such flux, and with such a grave need to improve, will not have on their board the guidance and wisdom of a man who not only co-founded the company but who was directly responsible for seven drivers’ championships and nine constructors’ titles.

Why will he not be there? Williams and Head were both unavailable for comment on Monday. I’m told, though, that his difficult relationship with chief executive officer Adam Parr was a part of Head’s decision to step down.

Ironically, Head’s departure may ease Barrichello’s path to a return.

Head is forthright character and I’m told he had grown tired of the Brazilian’s complaints about the team’s difficulties.

With the 65-year-old no longer involved, that on the face of it is one less barrier to Barrichello being in the car again.

It seems, though, that all the driver hopefuls will have to wait. Williams are in the process of sponsorship negotiations with the Gulf state of Qatar, and they take primacy over a final decision on drivers.

With more than a month until the start of pre-season testing on 7 February, there is plenty of time to sort out drivers. After all, it’s not as if Williams are struggling for choice.

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