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Double DRS made overtaking too easy - Vettel

Sebastian Vettel isn't sure about the double DRS zone © Getty Images

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• In Focus:
• DRS
• |
• Rule changes

• Feature:
• Vettel on Canada, KERS and Hamilton
  

• Drivers:
• Sebastian Vettel

• Teams:
• Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel thinks the double DRS zone at the Canadian Grand Prix made overtaking too easy.

For the first time this year, the FIA extended the DRS zone over two consecutive straights in Canada in order to increase the chances of drivers overtaking with the aid of their moveable rear wings. But Vettel believes it went a step too far and took some of the challenge out of passing.

"In the end you have to be careful about how big you create the zone because obviously it can make overtaking too easy, like I think it was in Canada," he told ESPNF1 in exclusive interview. "If you are right behind and you open the wing then the other guy has no chance to defend, which is surely not the idea. But we are playing around and it is a new system. We are still early in the season and everybody is still learning with it."

Vettel lost the Canadian Grand Prix on the last lap after Button closed using the DRS on the penultimate lap and then pressured him into a mistake. Vettel said he had to push hard as Button would have found an easy way past with the help of the DRS on the final straight.

"I think in the conditions I obviously had to push very hard to stay ahead and I tried very hard to keep the gap for the back straight [where the DRS zone was]," he said. "Because the thing is that once Jenson was close in the DRS zone then it would have been just too easy to overtake and he would have gone past no problem."

There will also be a double DRS zone at the European Grand Prix in two weeks time, but Vettel said things might be different there as overtaking has always been difficult.

"In Valencia I think the layout will be different and it will be more difficult in some ways [to overtake. But I haven't seen the map yet and I don't know where they have decided to put the zones etc."

Laurence Edmondson is the deputy editor on ESPNF1

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