Why not fix the problem that makes DRS necessary in the first place?
The reason there's no overtaking (apart from crummy design of all the Hermann Tilke-designed circuits, like COTA) is that most of the modern F1 car's cornering potential is produced by wing-generated downforce. And those wings are so complex and so highly specialized as to make them excessively sensitive to any interruption of the laminar airflow. Which gives the car in the lead an almost insurmountable advantage because he's running in the cleanest air.
If you built an airplane with wings that sensitive to turbulence, it wouldn't be able to fly on blustery or stormy days. Or near any other airplanes. Or to put the shoe on the other foot, if F1 cars had wings more like airplanes, they would be far less sensitive to turbulence.
Like this ^^^^^^
The wings are much simpler, just a single element, and the rear wing is barely higher than the rear tires are tall.
Plus the wings are made from non-frangible material, so they don't shower the track with needles of carbonfiber whenever cars swap paint.
And you can tell immediately from the width of the tires that this car's cornering prowess is dramatically more dependent on tire adhesion, which doesn't give a hoot about turbulent air.
This design is emblematic of one of if not the most exiting periods of racing for F1. The cars were plenty fast enough to make your heart race and when you were cornering near the limit, you were looking out the side of the car to see where you were going.
Was it slower than today? Yeah, sure. That's the payback from the massive amount of wing-created downforce, innit? Pole at Monaco in 1976 was taken at 82 mph. In 2024, it was 106. Pole for the Dutch GP in 1976 was 115 mph. Last year it was 136. The absolute speed isn't the question, the question is how much more exciting was the racing? When was there more dicing for position, more pushing-and-shoving, and more competitive overtaking (not just in the back of the pack, but at the front of the field as well), back then or now?
Go watch videos from those old races. Go watch Lauda and Hunt racing dohannel to dohannel. Or Senna and Prost going at it like mad dogs. Then tell me that today's F1 is as much as a pimple on the ass of the low downforce days.
Making the cars even more complex won't change that. That DRS is even considered beneficial shows a systemic problem with the sport's management. Truth be told, they couldn't care less about the state of the competition as long as the TV revenues keep pouring in.
And now they've sold the sport's birthright to the New Green Religion. Next step, all-electric cars powered entirely by solar panels. By 2035 they'll insist all drivers set a good civic example by subsisting entirely on a vegan diet, even in the off-season, like all good stewards of the planet (Hambone's already there, which is certain proof of how stupid an idea it is).
