Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff praised Red Bull’s handling of its protest against their dual-axis steering system on Friday.
DAS, which appeared on Mercedes’ cars for the first time in pre-season testing, allows its drivers to adjust the toe angle of the front wheels while the car is in motion.Under F1’s rules, Red Bull was unable to protest DAS until it had been run during a race weekend. The team submitted its protest against the design following practice on Friday, the earliest opportunity it had, rather than waiting until after the race and putting its result in doubt. The team also notified Mercedes in advance of its plans.
“I must say it was fair play from Red Bull to seek that clarification by a protest on Friday not on Sunday night,” said Wolff.
“I think it would have been detrimental to Formula 1 to go back to the first race, have a result on track, and then a protest and it wouldn’t be clear who has won. I like the sportsmanship of that decision.”
Although the stewards rejected the protest, Wolff says Red Bull were justified in raising it.
“The system is so innovative that it is fair enough that clarification is being sought,” he said. “It is absolutely OK to protest. I think we would have done it the other way around, too.”
Wolff is “happy that the FIA has been very consistent with their verdict”, he added.
“We’ve had obviously a lot of conversations with them. We didn’t want to run something that they would deem to be over the line. And therefore the outcome reflects the exchanges and the opinions that we had with the FIA over the last few months.”
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Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
5th July 2020, 9:33
Well done to all parties involved, RedBull to do it before race weekend, Mercedes to provide required evidence (not that they had the choice) and FIA to give a quick verdict and publishing their report.
That’s some contrast with an unnamed engine story…
What harm does it do to actually publish reports for every investigation. Maybe the transparency F1 needs (especially now with upcoming cost cap and co).
Femke
5th July 2020, 10:22
They do publicly publish all reports, decisions, rulings etc
https://www.fia.com/documents/season/season-2020-1059
slowmo (@slowmo)
5th July 2020, 11:50
There have to be some limits to transparency otherwise teams would protest parts they do not understand on other cars simply to get more information. The FIA must be able to not give away hard won innovations. The Ferrari issue is different to this though, its not acceptable for the FIA to be gagged by a single team on what they can say, the information sharing decision should be on the FIA as the governing body imo.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
5th July 2020, 9:54
Toto wearing new Halo replacement?
Rui Trindade (@trindade)
5th July 2020, 13:11
Pure hypocrisy. Let’s see what you will say now:
“Hamilton is called to the stewards. Red Bull have asked for a review of the decision not to penalize him for ignoring yellow flags in qualifying. He has already lost one time for going off track. If the decision is overturned, he will go back to 10th on the grid “
Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
5th July 2020, 16:18
Hope he praises them now.