McLaren have no plans to copy Mercedes' DAS system

McLaren

McLaren have no plans to copy Mercedes' DAS system

Team believe that gains can be made elsewhere

Matthew Bannister

Saturday 22 February 2020 18:55 Updated: 03:01

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has praised Mercedes for their Dual-Axis Steering (DAS) system but says that his team will not be adapting the innovation for the MCL35.

Seidl was appreciative of the ingenuity and invention of the Mercedes team and the DAS system, but he believes that McLaren can benefit more from focusing on other areas of their car.

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He said: "First of all, hats off to Mercedes for this kind of invention which is great to see in Formula One.

"Hats off also for all the publicity they created for Mercedes for that. I don't know details about the system, so I think it would be wrong to even judge it - what it brings, and so on.

"I think for us as a team, where we are right now, there are other areas we have to focus on where we can make bigger steps than trying to copy another system from Mercedes."

McLaren had a minor delay on Friday afternoon, with Lando Norris confined to the garage for a period, but aside from that, the team enjoyed consistent running across the three days.

"To be honest, I'm really, really happy with how it went so far for various reasons," said Seidl. "First of all, if you look at the number of laps and the reliability we have shown so far.

"It's by far the best start for many, many years for McLaren, which is simply a great reward, and a sign for the entire team that all of the hard work in the last month in order to make this step is paying off."

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While McLaren will not be looking into DAS, Racing Point and Ferrari have already confirmed their interest in the system, though both have admitted that it would be a mid-season addition due to the alterations required.