Mercedes was the talk of the town last week after introducing the DAS system, one that is heralded as revolutionary. As anticipated, all other F1 teams were given a look at the new system, but for Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto, the team is not interested and has no intention to use it in its cars this season with the reason being it would not have any impact on their cars speed.
While Mercedes were the ones to introduce the device into Formula 1, the true benefits of it are not fully known. This means that no one in the sport of F1 knows for sure if it will have an impact on speeds, and one who does is Mattia Binotto, the team principle for Ferrari. However, Helmut Marko from Team Red Bull says it will give them a 0.2 second advantage. Speaking to the media about the device and whether Ferrari gave it serious consideration, Binotto stated, “We considered it, but did not proceed with it. We didn’t see enough profit in it.”
After Ferrari lost to Mercedes several times, they will be looking to break that cycle this season, and it is why Binotto confessed if the new DAS system could have helped in any way, they would have jumped all over it.
However, during his press conference, Binotto was admittedly against the use of Dual-Axis Steering, and they held off testing for three days as a result. This could be simply that Ferrari have developed a super-fast car for the upcoming season and are waiting to show off their speed. On the other hand, Ferrari is well-aware that the season ahead will be a challenge with Red Bull giving them a solid run for their money, but surprisingly Red Bull sees Mercedes as their strongest challengers, not Ferrari.
Vettel at the top of Pre-Season Testing
Sebastian Vettel has posted the fastest lap in pre-season testing in Barcelona on a day that saw multiple red flags. After an earlier incident that saw Vettel go for a spin in the gravel, he ended the morning session with a time of 1 minute, 16.841s. The time was the fastest for Ferrari so far this season and was more than a second faster than the time posted by Valtteri Bottas last week for Mercedes.