With a little over four weeks to go until the start of the 2019 FIA F1 season, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport today unveiled its 2019 named the Mercedes-AMG F1 W10 EQ Power+
The 2019 contender completed its first laps around the 2.98 km Silverstone International Circuit this morning with Valtteri Bottas behind the wheel, followed by Lewis Hamilton this afternoon.
"The 2019 season will be a new challenge for all of us,” said Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO. “The regulations have changed quite substantially. We have to start from scratch, we need to prove ourselves again – against our own expectations and against our competitors. We start the season with zero points, so we’re taking nothing for granted and there’s absolutely no feeling of entitlement to be at the front. In fact, with the regulation change for the new season, every team can have a shot at the title and we’re seeing all of them as a potential threat.”
New aero regulations drive significant changes to the W10
Compared to its predecessor, the Mercedes-AMG F1 W10 EQ Power+ has been changed substantially. The majority of those modifications were driven by the significant changes to the Technical Regulations for the 2019 Formula One season.
Despite significant changes to many areas of the car, the W10 also retains some of the characteristics of its predecessors, as the general architecture and the wheelbase stay the same.
An all-new Power Unit for the 2019 season – the Mercedes-AMG F1 M10 EQ Power+
While the chassis development was partly driven by regulatory changes, the Power Unit regulations remained largely stable, making the development work more of an evolutionary process in which the team worked hard to achieve two main goals – improving performance and reliability. “We’ve made changes to the cooling architecture of the Power Unit, which hopefully provide aerodynamic benefit on the car and also provide efficiency benefit on the Power Unit – so, hopefully a win on both the chassis and on the Power Unit,” said Andy Cowell, Managing Director of Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains.
The result of more than a year’s work
Work on the all-new Formula One car started 16 months ago, when the team was still fighting for its fourth championship title. The development work was spearheaded by a small group of engineers, working on the general concept of the car. Over the course of the 2018 season and in the midst of an exciting and challenging championship fight, more and more engineers in both Brixworth and Brackley started working on the W10.
On the chassis side, more than half of the engineers in the design office were working on the W10 by the 2018 F1 summer break. In October, when the F1 circus headed to the Americas and both the team and Lewis claimed their fifth World Championship titles, the factory was working flat out on the W10, designing and producing parts of the future contender. Overall, about 7000 drawings were released for manufacture.
A strong and trusted driver line-up for 2019
While the 2019 Formula One paddock will see changes to various driver line-ups in almost every team, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport will stay true to the line-up that won the team the 2017 and 2018 Constructors’ Championships – Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. After the winter break, both drivers are now eager to go back racing.
2019 – An historic year for Mercedes
The 2019 season plays a special role for the team, as the year of the 1000th Formula One Grand Prix is also the tenth season in modern-day F1 for Mercedes as a works team.
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