Hamilton on DAS: "Hopefully it'll make a huge difference"

Current Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton is hoping that Mercedes' new Dual Axis System (DAS) will give them a significant performance advantage over their rivals ahead of the beginning of the new season.

The first glimpse of the new system appeared during live coverage of the second day of the first test when onboard footage from Hamilton's car showed the six-time world champion pulling and pushing his steering wheel with the help of a button.

DAS is supposed to change the toe angles of the wheels, with many believing it benefits tyre performance on the straights. And with it being hard to replicate, Hamilton says he will only use it if it delivers key performance gains.

"Hopefully it'll make a huge difference," Hamilton told CRASH.net. "At the moment I don't really use it a lot to be honest. Sometimes you practice with it, sometimes without it. I don't really know how much we'll be using it."

Hamilton and Mercedes are expected to use the system when there's a clear performance benefit, especially on circuits with long straights, such as Monza and Baku and the 35-year-old Briton said he is proud of the whole team's mentality to improve.

"Honestly I think our whole mentality continues to improve and impress, Hamilton said. "Engineers are often quite closed-minded and stick to doing the same things they've done in the past because it's safe and it's the reliable way because it's worked before.

"But over the last couple of years I've really been pushing the guys into areas of where they are not so comfortable and we've discovered things we would never had if we hadn't done that."

The system would take the rest of the grid around half a season to produce, with no long-term benefit due to it being outlawed from the 2021 season onwards.