Will any other team add DAS to their car?

Word is that they've lodged a protest and will receive clarification later today. If the F1 commentators are to be believed, Merc have claimed that the primary purpose of DAS is tire warming.

 

Utter bs

 

Merc are trying to come up with any excuse to make sure fia make it legal.

 

And Toto trying to pretend he’s taking the high ground (of having all of F1’s interest in mind) saying it would be inappropriate to lodge a protest now, after a long absence. Shut up!

I hope the stewards uphold the protest and at the same time embarrass the FIA who helped Merc pass this nonsense by suggesting to them to actuate the system with a steering wheel movement - ostensibly to make it a “steering manoeuvre”. When we all know a steering input should be intended to impart a direction change.

As I already noted in March, beyond the aero impact of toeing the wheels in or out, and their claim that it is related to steering, there’s also the fact that by steering the wheels the ride height at the front of the car is affected-however slight that may be-and this is a de facto set-up modification.

 

Everyone discussing this is taking the high road. Butter wouldn't melt in Christian Horner's mouth as he discussed the protest - which is ironic in that he started by saying "I don't know anything about a protest", and that statement quickly evolved to "and now is the right time for us to protest, to get clarity on the rules..."

Taking a guess here: Merc will be asked not to use DAS this race and remove it from their cars after the 2nd Austria race.

 

I think RedBull have DAS in the waiting.

We could see it in the first week in Austria.

 

They get the same rulebook as everyone else.
If Ferrari had come up with DAS and it looked good you would be defending it.

 

Personally I don't think DAS should be banned at all.
Mercedes may be the first to use it, but other teams should be allowed to adopt it, copy it or whatever.
If DAS improves cornering, what's the ground for banning it? Because it's no specifically allowed in the rule book?
The regulations can hardly keep up with progress.
I just don't understand that knee-jerk reaction that wants to stop any innovation in F1.
I doubt we would have the same furore if Red Bull, or Mclaren had thought it first.

 

I think it should be banned because it is such a clumsy, unsophisticated, not very clever contraption intended solely to contravene the rules that require suspension set-up remain unchanged during operation. It is on the same level as the stupid driver controlled DRS—which although legal—how clever is that?

When teams were designing wings using aeroelastic principles to stall the wings at top speed, at least that was clever. Even the F-duct—although ridiculous in that the driver needed to block the vent hole with his elbow—was at least very clever and sophisticated in its operation.

So imagine if every team goes through the trouble of designing their own DAS system and to satisfy the FIA—in fact to follow FIA suggested operating procedures—you’d have the whole grid of drivers tugging and pushing the steering wheel all race long, like me trying to find the just-right driving position while moving, for no effective benefit over the others.

If you read Newey’s book, you find a load of examples of clever thinking and great designs that were intended to extract the best intrinsic performance out of the car and not cheat the rules stating the settings of the car are not allowed to change in operation. Even the fiddle brake at McLaren—as used on tractors and tanks and not a Newey invention—is described as a pretty crude concept which needed to be carefully managed as it was quite detrimental to the life of the brakes—as can be expected from such a crude contraption.

 

If it's so crude and unsophiqticated why are the other teams so afraid of it?
If it's worthless, let Mercedes struggle with it then.
I don't think the FIA would impose it to all the teams. As for drivers "tugging and pushing the steering wheels all race long" nobody would see it anyway.
Not so long ago, drivers were driving a lot of the time with one hand and wrestling all race long with a gear lever; what's the difference?
Once more the FIA is dithering and will pander to those who make the most noise.
I bet if Maranello had invented that it would be acclaimed as a fantastic piece of engineering.

 

The packaging of DAS is extremely clever, imagine having to build something that takes thousands of pounds of forces as a stiff member and can move in and out along with rotating the standard rack and pinion into a space about 1/3rd that of a shoe box and it is even hydraulically assisted!

Suspension members are not allowed to have their alignments changed during operation, yet ANY suspension with either camber (which F1 use a lot of) and caster (which F1 uses only a little. change their alignment settings when the wheels go over bumps and dips and especially when the front wheels are used to turn the car. What is more, caster causes camber gain in turns! So, if suspensions were absolutely not allowed to "change" cars could not even be driven around corners!

And then there is the Ron Dennis saying:: "everything deflects"--well, in a suspension when things deflect alignments change!

My guess is that the cat is out of the bag, and there will be dozens of systems developed all providing the change in toe so as to manage tire life better. I can even see a steering system where the driver does not have to pull and push, just turn the wheel just turn as normal.

 

A simple bolt can take thousands of pounds of load - so not really saying much. Also, throw in an army of designers and the couple of years to design it that it took and again not so clever. Finally, the biggest challenge seemed to be to disguise it as a steering wheel motion in order to contravene the rules about changing the static settings on the move and apparently on the advice of the FIA:

“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.’ "
​

As for if Ferrari did it, well they already have something passive in the steering geometry,apparently. If they did it this way the whole of F1 would be crying bloody murder because the rule is: Ferrari cheats, the others are "clever".

There are many much more clever inventions related to steering like the Arthur Bishop's variable ratio steering - started before the age of powerful computers - whereas here it probably just shifting the rack up and down or forward and aft (dual axes), some bell-crank arrangement or purely hydraulic. Not simple but given enough time, money and wilful ignorance of the intent of a the rules, doable.

 

That is the funny thing about rules--the way they are worded matters.
This time around the rules were worded in such a way that they had changed them for 2021 even before they started 2020.
It must have been one of those "Oh My G*d, the rules do allow that" moments.

 

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/fia-red-bull-mercedes-das-protest/4824477/?utm_source=home-page-widget&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=widget-1

BS

Good bye 2020

 

Lets see if RBR actually have a DAS of their own ,as hinted by Horner. Ferrari had something in development last year but decided against it .

 

https://www.planetf1.com/news/red-bull-developing-das/

 

Called it.

Post #31