Mercedes took inspiration from an old concept for its DDA

Mercedes F1 will probably not have many opportunities to take advantage of its ingenious find with the Dual Axis Steering installed on the W11. This system which allows pilots to correct the direction in a straight line will be banned next year while the current season is on hiatus until at least the end of June because of the coronavirus.

John Owen, the chief designer of Mercedes F1, revealed that this idea was inspired by an old concept in a podcast published on YouTube.

“There are almost never new ideas in the innovation sector. We only use old ideas, but their number allows us to create a new concept on something different, explained the engineer from the star team. The DDA was born from the ashes of something else. We tried and tested it in competition two years ago, but the result did not live up to expectations. »

In developing the Dual Axis Steering, John Owen and his team took care to ensure compliance with the technical regulations so that no complaints from rival teams could succeed.

“The DDA worked really well, admitted the engineer. We saw that the regulations did not prohibit it. It was unusual and surprising. We asked ourselves more and more: “How could we prevent it? ». We put ourselves in the shoes of our competitors by thinking about their arguments. We built a system based on these reflections. »

“We could see that the DDA system created an immediate reaction that raised the possibility that it was illegal. But most people who studied it remarked that it might indeed be legal and wondered why they hadn't seen this before. There is now general panic at the idea of ​​finding something that does not comply with the regulations. It's F1 in general. »

Mercedes F1 will in any case still have to wait before being able to exploit its DDA in racing due to the current pandemic, but rival teams cannot however use the break to copy this trick due to the closure of factories.