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FIA to discuss Sauber DRS issue with F1 teams' tech chiefs

Formula 1 race director Charlie Whiting says that Sauber’s Monza DRS problems will be discussed at a meeting with team technical directors tomorrow.

Marcus Ericsson suffered a huge accident in FP2 in Italy when he lost control under braking because his Sauber’s DRS flap did not close properly.

The DRS-induced crash prompted Renault's Carlos Sainz to call for F1 to do away with the "dangerous" system in its next regulations cycle.

Sauber implemented an overnight fix at Monza that the FIA was happy with, but Whiting wants to make sure that the problem can’t happen again by talking through the issue with the team tech bosses.

“We’ve got a technical working group meeting on Thursday, and we’re going to discuss that,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com.

“We checked a lot of DRS systems on the cars after qualifying, to make sure that none of them could do what the Sauber’s did.

“Theirs effectively had a stop, but the stop was easy to override, and it could go over the centre, and when it closed, when the driver brakes or goes off the throttle above a certain threshold, it’s slow to close, because it has gone over centre.

"They put these stops in it to make sure it couldn’t happen again.”

Nico Hulkenberg also had an issue in practice at Monza with his Renault DRS sticking in the open position.

“It’s not uncommon when you see a failure of the actuator, I expect,” said Whiting. “It happened to Kimi [Raikkonen] in Spa, after accident damage of course.”