The double DRS too expensive for Sauber

The Sauber team is currently studying the system put in place by Mercedes, called the W-Duct or more recently Double DRS (or DDRS). However, the Swiss team does not seem inclined to implement this system on Pérez and Kobayashi’s C31s, because even though the gains in terms of lap times are interesting, the development cost is very high.

Matt Morris, the director of design at the Sauber team, told *Autosport* that he believes the balance between the financial cost of implementing the Double DRS and its gains is not sufficiently interesting at the moment to put it in place: “We have done some tests at the factory, but for now, it doesn’t work very well for us in terms of costs related to performance. And beyond this cost-performance ratio, it’s difficult to know the exact potential gains, and actually, it’s only really useful during qualifying. It’s clearly a few tenths of a second in qualifying, but to achieve it, many parts of the car would need to be modified. That’s the problem.”

The Swiss team preferred to focus on other aerodynamic developments this week for the private tests at Mugello. There are tests being conducted at the level of the rear wing, but nothing related to a possible Double DRS, as Morris explains: “We ran with some pressure sensors at the back, that’s why all those tubes were present. It’s just pressure measurement, that’s all.”