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.

With regen boost, people only use it to keep within the range of drs for the same straights. Or dump it all on the last lap. The same monotonous situation. Same 0 level of strategy. 

Many don't use them, but races provide opportunities to put boost to overall better use than last lap and gaining DRS (not that I'm much better at using them, am often too reluctant to be good in split second decisions and waste chances).

A lot more limited and fast regaining boost makes it almost useless and mostly a repetitive chore. It's applying a little bit every lap to not waste regain. It's much less use to perform an overtake beyond getting a faster car out of side-by-side a little sooner, as track position is then often more valuable than limiting boost use, so for the front car it's often better to fight the atrack off with using its own boost, or retake a bit later if it's more efficient, as they operate from an advantageous position as they haven't already used some boost to close a little bit of gap. Closing DRS gap becomes more difficult if the car in front decides shaking you off serves their purpose better. There's a little skill left in using it most efficiently over the race to harvest the most time, but no more managing it to gain the most out of a limited resource.