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Well I look at it differently. I don’t see it as an inequitable gift to the passing car, I see it as a means of getting slower cars out of the way and letting the best machines race each other. How many times in past years did we see this: some guy is in 4th, because of a pit sequence or lucky qualifying run, but he cannot keep pace with the leaders and is losing a half second per lap. Five cars are faster than he is, but they are stacked up behind because they are not so much better they can pass easily. They, too, are losing a half second per lap and their chances of a podium are toast. There is no way pit or tire strategies can make up the time they lost on the track because of being stuck in line.

With DRS, they make the pass, check out on the slower car, and the race is on to catch the leaders. Without DRS, Vettel doesn’t get out of 8th after his last stop and he’s stuck sniffing Hulkenberg’s exhaust for the last 7 laps instead of storming to within a few car lengths of a podium.

I go back to my original point about DRS; if it were an “unfair” advantage to the hunter, he would then become the hunted to the same car on the next lap. It almost never happens. His car has to be the better machine just to get within one second in the DRS detection zone. Once he makes the pass, in the next two laps he proves it because the trailing car never gets within that one second window again unless the pit sequence and tire strategies make it possible.