comestiblesdispensedby the on-site canteen
are reputedlythe envy of the wider Mercedes F1
organisation. This is a business that doesn’t take
its employees for granted –and nor should it,
because Mercedes’present success is built on a
foundation ofgreat pain. After MikaHäkkinen’s
back-to-back drivers’titl es in 1998 and ’99,the
McLaren-Mercedes partnershipstruggled to
recapture the magic.Often the engine was the
guilty party in on-track failures, even thoughthe
companybegan to focusits efforts solely on F1.
It was a make-or-break period in the middle-
2000s thatpersuadedMercedesto invest ina
way that would not only enable it to winkle ou t
the reli ability problems, butalso to accelerate
past its rivals in development for the coming
hybrid technologies. It’s well-known Mercedes
had a single-cylinder researchmodel for the V6
turbocharged hybrid regulationsrunn ing as early
as 2011, morethan two full seasons before the
rules cameinto force.
“You have to goback to2005,” says Cowell.
“That was whenMercedes decided all theV8
activitywas going to be done here inBrixworth
- which required extra dynos to be installed,
including asingle-cylinder – andthe act ivities
based inStuttgartwould be closed down, with
some ofthe expertise coming here. 2004had
been a horrible season with lotsof fing er-pointing
internally.There were 400 people here and 200
in Stuttgart, all justworki ng on a V8 for McLaren.
“That’s when Ola Källenius [now chairman of
DaimlerAG] was appointedas ma naging director
and said we weregoing to do all the F1 naturally
aspirated V8development here. Whenthe KERS
[Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems] regulations
came out,Ola said, ‘That’s apowertrain topic- Mercedes should invest inthat technology at
Brixworth.’And youend up with a 60-kilowatt
electric motor, an inverter [the control unit for
the motor], cell technologybeing developed with
A123 [a specialist battery manufacturer]and HP P
understanding how to put that into a battery,
plus thatsingle-cylinder test bed. So, when the
new [2014]regulations came out we hadthe
infrastructureand the expertise[in place].
“We put a turbocharger gasstand in as a new
capabilityand got onwith it while our V8and
KERS system wasregard ed as justabout the best - and it was reliable, so it wasn’tsuckingin lo ts
of resource. Allof our problem-solving resource
could go into the new stuff.”
Throughout 2012,when Mercedes started
to pic k up race wins as aconstructor inits own
right aswell aswith McLaren,the viewinternall y
was that the KERS-equipped powertrain
was competitive enough to justify directing
engineering-innovation re source elsewhere
(the Mercedes KERS was designed and built
in a Port akabin on site,now repurposed for
storage).Even in 2013, when outsiders regarded
Mercedes’ haul of threerace wins as inadequate
in comparisonwith Red Bull’s13 (including
nine consecutive victories for Sebastian Vettel),
Brixworth maintained its beliefthat the fol lowing
seasonwould be the big opportunity.
Throughout thehybrid erathe Mercedes
power unit has been theone to have , even after
the aerodynamic regulationswere overhauled
for 2017. Thatchange was largelya resp onse
to Mercedes’superiority,andt he perception
(magnified by angry noises-off from thelikes o f
Adrian Newey) that thepowertrain wastoo great
an ar biter of performance.Statisticsin the three
seasons since– includingyet another regulatory
tweak directed partially at clipping Mercedes’
wings – suggest thatriva l manufacturers still
have some ground tomakeup. But Cowell insists
power unit performance is converging.
“The technicalregulationshave been fixed,
so it gets harder going over the sam e ground.
I thinkour development curve,the power unit we
introduced in Melbourne wasa goodstep [over
2018]. Throughout 2019 our qualifying pace
hasn’t improved, but our racepace has improved
with regards to thepowertrain contribution.
Ferrari, Renault, Honda, they’re very close.Cowellsurveyspartofthe
Brixworthfacility(below,far
right)andisrightlyproudof
whatitproduces