Pat Symonds angry that one of the DRS zones has been cancelled

Formula 1 technical director Pat Symonds commented on the decision to cancel one of the four DRS zones originally planned on the reconstructed Albert Park track.

Pat Symonds: “We understood that the new generation cars turned out quite well, but they had to be tested in the real case. The Australian Grand Prix has always been one of the highlights of the season and we worked on the Albert Park track renovation project because that stage went well, with one exception: the racing here was not very exciting.

It was very difficult to overtake here so some drastic measures had to be taken. The four DRS zones on this track didn’t mean they were all set up for overtaking. In our view, two are needed so that the intervals between cars are shortened and only two others have to be overtaken.

I’m upset that one of them had to be cancelled, in my opinion it wasn’t worth it, but still I believe today’s race could be interesting.

I think it was actually abandoned due to the fact that one of the riders thinks he can show faster speeds without this DRS zone. As far as I understand, this rider is Fernando Alonso.

I agree that the DRS system is a bit of an artificial solution, and there are fans who don’t like it, but let’s not forget that that same Alonso only missed the championship win in 2010 because he beat Vitaly Petrov in Abu Dhabi was unable to catch up.

Judging by the results of Formula 1 polls, the fans don’t watch overtaking races as such, they watch races for the sake of a tight fight, and the race on the track should end with overtaking. We have a lot of ideas and now we are preparing to execute them in 2026, hoping to make a car that will be even better than this one.”