Mercedes confirm first DAS proposal was rejected by the FIA

Mercedes

Mercedes confirm first DAS proposal was rejected by the FIA

The story behind the gadget of pre-season testing

Sam Hall

Wednesday 3 June 2020 13:38 Updated: 13:57

Mercedes technical director James Allison has revealed the FIA rejected the initial concept for the dual-axis steering [DAS] system.

In a Mercedes video, Allison has said DAS was initially designed to be controlled by a paddle on the steering wheel, but that the FIA ordered changes be made.

“The simple answer was, it was really quite difficult indeed, and in fact, we first wanted to introduce this system in 2019," said Allison.

Article continues under video

"We took our ideas to the FIA, showed them, explained why we thought it was legal, and they begrudgingly agreed that dual-axis steering was actually legal.

"But they didn’t much like the way we’d done it because the second axis we were getting from a lever on the wheel rather than that whole-wheel movement.

“So they said, ‘No. You’re going to have to move the whole wheel in and out’. I think when they said that they were hoping that this would be too difficult and that we would go away and cause them no more problems.

“But we have a very inventive chief designer, and our chief designer John Owen took one look at that challenge, and he’s got a really good gut feel for whether something is doable or it’s not, and that’s a really helpful characteristic.

"It allows us to be quite brave spending money, when most people would feel the outcome was quite uncertain."

Owen's persistence led to the second incarnation of the device that ultimately appeared on the car in pre-season testing earlier this year.

Allison added: “John took that challenge on, reckoned he could do it, put it out to our very talented group of mechanical designers, and between them they cooked up two or three ways that it might be done.

"We picked the most likely of those three and, about a year after that, out popped the DAS system that you saw at the beginning of this season.”

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