James Allison, Technical Director for Mercedes Formula 1, believes that FIA did not expect the team to find a feasible Dual-Axis Steering (DAS) system with in the legal framework of F1.
Mercedes surprised the Formula 1 teams at Barcelona during testing session earlier this year. Drivers were seen driving with variable positions of steering wheel while the front tires responded to drivers actions.
Mercedes F1 rivals stormed it over the legality of W11 enhancement called DAS. However, to the surprise of many FIA confirmed its legality after an initial rejection of the system. It confirmed the assessment and approval of DAS.
Allison revealed initial plans of the team to introduce DAS in 2019 using a lever system. But FIA rejected the design and suggested whole wheel movement for approval.
“It was really quite difficult indeed,” he said in a Mercedes video on DAS.
“And in fact we first wanted to introduce this in 2019.
“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.
“And so they said, ‘No, you’re going to have to move the whole wheel in and out.’
“And I think when they said that they were hoping that would be too difficult, and we would go away and cause them no more problems!”
Allison Happy with DAS
Despite Mercedes’ agreement to a ban of the system from 2021, Allison was happy with the development of the system.
“We have a very inventive chief designer, John Owen, and he took one look at that challenge – he’s got a really, really good gut feel for whether something is doable or not, and that’s a really helpful characteristic, because it allows us to be quite brave spending money when most people would feel the outcome was quite uncertain,” he added.
“John has a good feel for whether he’s going to be able to get out of the woods, and into fair ground again.
“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 in which 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.”
