Mercedes were ‘sneaky’ with its DAS reveal

Red Bull’s Alex Albon has called Mercedes “sneaky” with their dual-axis steering system reveal at the first pre-season test.

Mercedes caused quite the commotion on the second day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya when Lewis Hamilton debuted DAS during his morning stint in Barcelona.

The Silver Arrows appear to have caught every other team off-guard with its innovative new system, which is currently legal before the 2021 regulations will effectively ban it.

With all of testing televised this year, there is no hiding place for any team when trialling new pieces of equipment – but Albon thinks teams would have picked up on it quickly anyway without access to on-board cameras.

“It’s quite nice to have all these on-boards and all that,” Albon said via Autosport.

“But at the same time, teams nowadays, they have photographers everywhere. Maybe we’d have known about it and you guys wouldn’t have.

“We were speaking about it with the team – just how would that feel just as a driver; moving the steering wheel must feel very strange.

“But that’s what testing is about and that’s what simulators are about as well. So, I’m sure they’ve tried it before.

“But it is sneaky. To be honest, I don’t really know what it’s being used for – I was driving the whole day [when the system was first revealed].

“So I just came back without a debrief and suddenly there was this thing on the screen all the time – replays showing the steering.”

Albon went on to say that an introduction of DAS at Red Bull is not of immediate importance to the team.

“No, we’re focused on ourselves at the minute,” Albon added.

“Of course maybe that’s a future thing but for the moment we’ve just been doing our runs, getting the laps in, getting miles in.

“There were a couple of things [to sort out], obviously like minor things, as always, tuning our car, and then we’ll worry about it when we come to Melbourne.”

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