Formula 1 Grand Prix Drivers’ Association directors Carlos Sainz and George Russell have opposing views on whether the FIA needs to make changes after Jack Doohan’s huge Suzuka shunt.
Doohan crashed his Alpine at Turn 1 in second practice on Friday at the Japanese GP, ripping his Alpine A525 to pieces and giving his team a lengthy repair job before final practice.
After the session it emerged Doohan hadn’t manually closed the DRS before Turn 1, meaning when he turned in he lost control of the car and smashed into the barriers.
That issue hadn’t arisen in the simulator prior to the weekend - despite Doohan entering the corner the same way virtually - and he had missed FP1 to give now-Haas reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa his car, so the crash occurred during Doohan's first laps of the circuit.
In the wake of the crash, The Race revealed on Saturday that multiple drivers had raised concerns in the drivers’ briefing on Friday night.
Several of them asked F1 race director Rui Marques to assess whether there’s the facility to automatically disable DRS on the entry to corners as a failsafe if the driver doesn’t close it.
Currently, the DRS can be closed by the driver braking, lifting off the throttle by a certain amount or by a manual press of the DRS button on the steering wheel.
One idea suggested is that automatic DRS closure could be achieved by GPS at certain parts of the track - such as Turn 1 at Suzuka.
That system would need to be robust, however, given any glitches would be problematic
What Sainz and Russell are saying
Russell and new-for-2025 GPDA director Sainz, who has replaced Sebastian Vettel in the role, gave opposing views when asked about the need for change over the weekend.
“Safety's still the main priority always with these cars, especially with the speeds we're doing - any other era of F1 Jack is not walking today,” Sainz said on Saturday when asked by The Race if a change was needed.
“So we need to keep making progress. If we are going to make the cars as fast as they are nowadays, we need to keep making progress with safety.
“I felt I was quite vocal [on Friday] in saying 'I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often' - because I've had moments where I mis-pressed the DRS button and it stayed open and it gives you a massive snap and a massive fright going into a corner like Turn 1 here, Shanghai Turn 1, Australia Turn 9.
“We have too many of these corners where it's down to the driver almost to close it, and down to the DRS to do a good job on recovery.
“I'm afraid there haven't been enough of these crashes in order to prove that maybe we need to work on safety in this item.
“But I hope [Doohan’s] crash shows that we need to make something that automatically- 100 metres, 50 metres before the braking, it shuts, so you don't get the chance for the driver to make a mistake or for DRS to fail, if it doesn't close. [And] it gives you a bit of warning that if it hasn't been closed by the FIA, you still need to close it.
“So, also going into next year with all this downforce thing that they want to adjust, it's important, I think, for us that they come up with [a solution that's] automatic.”
Of course, for F1’s new 2026 regulations DRS has been dropped - but, as Sainz alludes to, the new front-and-rear active aero will still entail manual control over the lower-drag (and thus lower-downforce) mode.
Yet Russell, who has served as GPDA director since his third season in F1, believes it should be left down to the drivers to avoid those types of incidents.
“Obviously what happened to Jack was a big shunt and very unfortunate, but I think it's one of those things that you see happen once and everybody will recognise, and this is probably the only corner on the whole calendar that it's a problem [at],” Russell said.
“I don't think anything really needs…as drivers, you have responsibilities; we've got to go flat-out down the straight and turn into the corners, and a flick of the button to turn the DRS off is part of the job.
“We don't want it to be automated, we want to leave it down to the drivers.
“There's already too many gadgets and systems.”
