What is behind Verstappen’s recurrent F1 DRS problems

As the Red Bull driver battled to recover from an early off across a gravel trap, his attempts to find a way past George Russell were compromised by his DRS playing up and not working consistently.

The DRS deployment issues were a recurrence of those that arose during qualifying and prevented Verstappen from challenging Charles Leclerc for pole position in his final run.

This had prompted the team to make changes under parc ferme conditions ahead of the race to try to resolve the problem.

In the pre-race official FIA technical delegate's report, which indicates what parts are changed on a like-for-like basis and without penalty, Red Bull opted to replace the DRS actuator and flap pivot pins on Verstappen's RB18.

This was clearly not enough to fully resolve the problem and suggests the issue goes beyond just a single item failing.

Mechanics work on the DRS of Max Verstappen, Red Bull RB18

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Indeed, as can be seen in the above image, the problem does not seem to just revolve solely around the actuator mechanism.

As this exclusive photograph shows, it appears the team was concerned with stress related cracks or fractures that they may have found during their checks of the wing after qualifying.

As such, there's a large section of the upper flap that's been subject to a fix, with the sponsor decals reapplied before the car made its way to the grid.

Interestingly enough, whilst Perez hadn't suffered the issue in qualifying and didn't have the DRS actuator or pivots replaced ahead of the race, they did apply the same fixes to his rear wing's upper flap.

The DRS issue has similarities to the problems faced by the team towards the end of last season.

However, what remains unclear if it's the mechanism that causing a stress induced failure of the flap, or vice versa.

Speaking after the Spanish GP race, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner suggested the issue revolved around the team making things too lightweight in this area of the car, with potentially a more flexible wing being susceptible to damage.

"Of course, we're chasing every ounce of performance and weight is a factor as well," he explained. "Maybe we've been too ambitious there.

"But I think we need to understand exactly what the issue is because we thought we had a fix. Unfortunately, it didn't prove to be a reliable fix for the whole race."

The first signs of Red Bull's DRS issues appeared at the Dutch Grand Prix last season when Verstappen was unable to open his wing flap on the run to the line during qualifying.

There were no further issues during that weekend, but running repairs between qualifying and race sessions became a running theme during the last few grands prix of 2021.

It was also noted, in those last few races, that the DRS flap and mechanism failure was accompanied by a fluttering of the upper flap when DRS was deployed, something that was also spotted in practice in Spain.