© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Valtteri Bottas says Mercedes is “happy” to have the DAS system in the car and they will “most likely” use it during qualifying and race.
Although there are threats that Mercedes’ Dual Axis Steering system will be protested if used at the Australian Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas says he believes the system will be used.
“I’m sure we’ll be DAS-ing some of the straights,” said the Finn.
“It depends which kind of laps, and which sessions, and so on. But we’re still happy to have it in the car. We hope it can give an advantage, but again, we will see.”
Bottas was asked about the threats of protest, but seemed unconcerned.
“Well, I’m sure we will have to wait for what happens, but like I said earlier we would be happy to run it, but it is up to the team to calculate the possible risk of it being taken away.
“In short answer, yes, we would like to keep it, but if there’s a big risk we don’t, there is no big problem then.”
The Finn was asked if the system could potentially be used in qualifying.
“That is something we would need to see in practice. Most likely yes, we’ll use it in qualifying.”
During pre-season testing Mercedes ran into some engine trouble on few occasions, both with their works team and their customer team Williams. Bottas believes the problems have now been solved.
“We had some issues, yes, we looked into them and fixed them the best we could, so we can run here with as much power as we can without reliability issues,” explained the Finn.
“We got some good learnings from [looking into the issues]. I feel confident and I really trust the team. Obviously, we’ll find out as the season goes on.
“It is quite normal that in testing not everything is at 100 per cent and we find some issues.
“That’s better than finding them in the first race.”
