Formula 1: The technology behind the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Team
In Formula 1, cars, drivers and communication work together. The Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team cooperates with TeamViewer and manufactures high-precision parts.
Lewis Hamilton accelerates in his Mercedes-AMG W15 during qualifying at the British Grand Prix in Silverstone.
(Image: André Kramer)
Formula 1 racing drivers need to be precisely informed about the capabilities of their car and the nature of the track, the strategy of the competition and the weather. Team managers, mechanics, engineers and IT specialists work closely together. "Milliseconds make all the difference to the result. Communication between drivers and race engineers is crucial, that's how we deliver performance," says Steven Riley, who has been Head of IT Service Management at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team for eight years. Not the slightest thing can go wrong in terms of communication.
To make effective decisions, the drivers need information, which they gather during free practice and qualifying on the race weekend and discuss with their team - even before the actual race on Sunday. We visited the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, England, to look over the shoulders of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team with drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.
Hectic operation and deafening noise
The German car manufacturer's works team uses Teamviewer software to provide drivers in the garage with information as quickly as possible during training and qualifying. Time is not only of the essence during qualifying and the race itself. Since the 2021 season, the two Friday practice sessions have been shortened by half an hour each to 60 minutes. To avoid losing valuable seconds, team managers communicate with the drivers in the garage via drop-down screens.
The screens are lowered above the cockpit and the driver receives information without having to peel himself out of the rocket on wheels. They run the Teamviewer Tensor software. The team leader uses it to show him telemetry data, the race strategy or tactical information on how to behave in each corner.
Only he speaks to the driver via headphones. The rest of the crew communicate with each other because the garage is hectic. The noise is deafening. Dozens of mechanics and engineers are working under high pressure.
(Image: Bild: Sam Bloxham für Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.)
Mobile IT for 24 Grand Prix races
Two mobile server cabinets travel around the world with the Formula 1 team to two dozen Grand Prix races. Each racing team brings its own IT infrastructure with it. The team sets up a WLAN on site, which employees and cars use to connect to the servers. The racing cars are data factories: "We collect seven billion data records on a race weekend," says IT Director Michael Taylor in an interview with heise online.
During the race, all teams are housed at locations around the world in a confined space. The WLANs are secured, just like in any other corporate environment. It does happen that someone accidentally tries to log on to another network, but espionage hardly plays a role. Such an attempt would immediately lead to a penalty or even disqualification of the team.
Mercedes-AMG W15: Redesign of the chassis
The south of England is home to several racing teams, including Aston Martin, McLaren and Red Bull. While McLaren is more like a classic car workshop, the Mercedes-AMG factory looks like a modern industrial laboratory. Various rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing machines run around the clock in spotlessly clean aisles to produce components for the racing cars.
The racing team is currently racing with the W15 – the W simply stands for "car", the 15 is the model number. After a disappointing Bahrain Grand Prix in 2023, a redesign was necessary. The gearbox housing and chassis of the W14 in particular proved to be prone to faults, while the rear axle was unpredictable.
Every year, the team develops a new chassis, the changes to which are so extensive that they are not possible during the racing season. The engineers are constantly working on small adjustments to improve the aerodynamics of the underbody, for example.
Underbody of the W15: the ground effect
One focus is on the so-called ground effect. For many years, Formula 1 drivers drove with a flat floor. Now the racing teams install two separate ducts from the sidepods to the rear. The airflow under the car generates downforce with less drag than with wings on the top. The vacuum sucks the car onto the asphalt, and the resulting grip gets it through a corner quickly.
The effect is not easy to control. At speeds of over 250 km/h, the underbody may be sucked too close to the asphalt and the airflow interrupted. Without downforce, the car bounces back to normal height, the aerodynamic downforce starts again and the car sinks. So it bounces up and down. This phenomenon, known as "porpoising", is particularly unpleasant for drivers. Constant changes to the ducts are intended to reduce the effect.
The data basis is provided by a model of the cars in the wind tunnel, scaled down to 60 percent. On the floor above the factory halls, around 200 industrial designers and engineers are working on analyzing the data from the experiments. This involves simulating the load of multiple g-forces on workpieces and refining the design based on the data in CAD programs. "We also have a virtual car, a digital twin," says IT Director Michael Taylor. The mechanical configuration is tested on it in a virtual world, for example the service life of the tires.
Autoclaves, CNC milling machines and 3D printers
The chassis and underbody of the W15 are made of carbon fiber composite. The components are cured in large pressure vessels, autoclaves from Scholz Maschinenbau, under high heat and a pressure of up to 90 PSI. These gigantic pressure cookers with a length of 3.30 meters and a diameter of 1.50 meters need 50 days for an entire chassis and 60 days for the underbody to harden the resin in the carbon fibers.
80 percent of the car consists of carbon fibers, but these only make up 35 percent of the weight. The rest is made up of plastic and metal. Large 3D printers produce custom-made clutch levers for the driver's fingers, for example. The 3D printers are ready faster than the autoclaves: produced on Thursday, the levers are already in use on Sunday.
Before use, the components are subjected to stress tests, which often take place overnight. Technicians carry out the monitoring from home using TeamViewer software. Such long-term tests were necessary for gearboxes, among other things. In elongated bends, such as turn 8 at the Istanbul Park Circuit in Turkey, the oil from earlier cars was forced in one direction for so long that the gearbox parts were not sufficiently lubricated and problems arose.
The factory produces metal parts using selective laser sintering (SLS). This involves heating the fine-grained metal under high pressure, which compacts the particles of the starting material and fills pore spaces. For most of the 3769 metal parts of a gearbox, however, 25 CNC milling machines from Matsuura are used, which mill gearbox parts from solid metal blocks around the clock with 260 different tool tips over five axes. The parts produced over a period of 140 hours are more durable and heat-resistant when milled from a single block.
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Put to the test in the race
Over the course of the season, the components, which are manufactured in small quantities but still industrially, have to prove their technical capabilities and durability - they cannot be replaced as often as required. In the case of the gearbox, for example, the Formula 1 regulations stipulate two groups of components, five of which may be used per season.
Formula 1 divides the engines, known as "power units" in racing jargon, into seven components such as the combustion engine and turbocharger, of which four are permitted in each case. If a team exceeds the permitted number of components, the driver is moved back five or ten places on the starting grid.
On Sunday, July 7, the Mercedes-AMG will have to prove its capabilities again at Silverstone. On June 30, Mercedes driver George Russel won the Austrian Grand Prix. The race continues in Hungary on July 21.
Transparency note: The author was invited to the race weekend by Teamviewer. Teamviewer covered the travel costs. There were no specifications regarding the type and scope of our reporting. (akr)
