@TPMillo It seems there wouldn't be much point in changing it this year, now that it's siginicantly less powerful irl as well.
Back in 2019, the slipstream reduced drag by 13%, but everyone complained that it was too powerful, so it was changed to 10%. This is a consequence of not have powerful enough dirty air, so as long as you got in drs range, it was basically impossible to defend.
We're seeing something similar irl this year, the drs is very powerful, and the dirty air is much more manageable, so it's very hard to defend against drivers behind, unless you have a significant straight line speed advantage. To add on to this, the cars in-game don't typically have the same disparity in straight line speed as irl, with the engines being identical (aside from Merc), the only real difference is drag, they even get the same scaling for low, medium, and very high downforce configurations. Some of that seems to be fixed this year with the 1-50 wing system, I assume they'll just specify a downforce and drag range across the entire thing instead of scaling them.
On a tangent, the drs was changed from 12% to 15% in 2021, 12% actually being very close to real life, but I assume it was to compensate for the weak slipstream. The problem is the engines had too much power, each having 860 hp, and Merc 880 hp. For comparison, Red Bull and Mercedes were estimated to have between 850-855 hp, with Ferrari and Renault 15-20 hp behind. To compensate the cars were made very draggy. The problem then comes with drs, not only is it more powerful, but it's also reducing a higher base value, meaning it was far too powerful. Hopefully the engines are a bit more accurate this year.
If you play singleplayer there's actually another problem. The slipstream and dirty air is halved (or at least significaly reduced) for the ai. This means the slipstream is even more pointless, but also means they lose less downforce when following. I really can't think of a good reason for this, in my testing I found that the ai can handle higher dirty air values, so it almost seems like an accident. It means the ai is more reliant on drs than the player, but also that they can follow a bit easier through corners. Really hope this is changed, I don't see any reason for it to be this way.
Another problem is overtake, or rather how deployment works. As speed increases, deployment will start reducing, I assume in an effort simulate real deployment patterns without having to map it all out. Unfortuately it means overtake gets less effective at higher speeds, being reduced by 10% at 306 kph, 25% at 324 kph, 40% at 342 kph, and 75% at 375 (in-game theoretical top speed). It might not sound like much, but losing 40 hp at 324 kph is ridiculous. I hope this is changed.
Sorry about the long post, kinda lost focus. ('´ ˘ `)