New Overtaking Armory : DRS and KERS

After the Australian and the Malaysian Grand Prix, it is certainly clear that some teams are still finding it a little hard to deal with their KERS (kinetic energy recovery system ) and DRS (drag reduction system ) and one of those teams is Red Bull. Their problems were clearly visible when at the Malaysian Grand Prix, KERS on Mark Webber’s car could not get activated and which made him to lose considerable places right at the start. There are some fans who might not have got hold of what this DRS and KERS is exactly and when drivers can and cannot use them. So in this article I would like to shed some light on this new addition to the armory of the teams.

I will start with the KERS which is Kinetic Energy Recovery System. When a driver brakes, all the kinetic energy that was previously lost as heat energy is now converted into the electrical energy with the help of an electric motor and is then stored in a battery. On the press of a button, all this stored energy is released to an electric motor attached to the gear box which gives an additional 80 bhp to the car. According to the FIA rules, a maximum of 400 KJ of energy can be stored and a maximum power of 60 KW be supplied through KERS; which means that this energy can be used for a total of 6.6 seconds at a time. And this 80 bhp boost can improve the lap timings by about 4-5 seconds and is a very important overtaking and defense tool for the drivers when used effectively. This system can only be used in specific areas of the circuit as specified by the Federation and only when the difference between the drivers is less than 1.5 seconds. Drivers with KERS have a fully charged battery at the start of the race and we saw the kind of impact that it can have on the race at the Malaysian Grand Prix when Mark Webber slipped down to 9^th spot from the 3^rd position on the grid at the beginning of the race.

The other change that has been introduced under the new movable bodyworks regulation this season is the adjustable rear wings which has been a change from the previous season’s adjustable front wings. It is popularly called as the DRS , Drag Reduction System. On the press of a button, the angle of incidence of air on the rear can be electronically adjusted within a specified range to reduce the air drag on the car. This makes the motion of the car more streamlined and eases the motion through the turbulent air bracket that is behind the car which he is overtaking. According to the FIA rules, DRS can be used anytime during the practice sessions and qualifying but during the race this can only be activated within the predetermined positions on the circuit and only when the driver is less than one second behind another car and just like the KERS, only at some predetermined positions on the track. The interesting thing about DRS is that it gets deactivated as soon as the driver brakes his car.

The idea of KERS is not new. McLaren had actually developed a KERS technology in 1999 and Mario Illien had also created a system for Mercedes in 1999 that used hydraulic fluid pressure to recover energy lost in braking. It would have provided a power boost of some 45bhp that could have been used a number of times in a lap. But use of this technology was earlier banned. But it was officially introduced only in 2009 and then was again banned for the 2010 season. Both these changes have been introduced to give more overtaking opportunities to the drivers and to make the race more interesting. Earlier when a driver wanted to overtake another driver, he had to first consider a lot of safety factors like the downforce on the car, grip on that particular section of the circuit and this thing becomes more difficult when every car on the circuit is nearly the same as the other. So a popular joke in F1 arena was that most of the times drivers waited for a pit stop to overtake to avoid all the risks. This is just like a “push to pass” button on the A1GP or more like NOS boost for a short duration that has made the race much interesting and we have already seen the drastic impacts it can have in the results. The KERS can also be considered as a step from the federation to make the racing just a little more environment friendly and least to say that this system can also be further used on other cars on the roads, buses and trains etc., once this technology is fully developed for other systems.