PARIS MOTOR SHOW: Real F1 links for Mercedes-AMG hypercar

First it was Aston Martin tapping Red Bull Racing’s F1 expertise for its hypercar and now it’s Mercedes-AMG.

The Mercedes-Benz performance division made the surprise admission last night that it will build a small run of hypercars, sitting well above the current range-topping GT S, to take on the likes of Ferrari’s LaFerrari, Aston’s AM-RB 001 and Porsche’s 918 Spyder.

Announced by Mercedes-Benz’s director of development Dr Thomas Weber last night, the unnamed hypercar will marry a 1.6-litre, V6 turbocharged petrol engine similar to the (Mercedes-AMF F1 engine pictured) with fast-discharge electric hybrid technology in a rear-wheel drive coupe.

At the opening of the Paris show this morning, AMG boss Tobias Moers added to Weber’s initial statement, confirmed the car would be a collaborative effort between the Mercedes-AMG’s powertrain development operation at Brixworth in England and with his own operation in Affalterbach, Germany.

And, surprisingly, he insisted the current Formula 1 engines would be surprisingly reliable in a road car.

“If you really examine a deep dive on the life of a Formula 1 engine and overlay that with the life of a road car engine, it’s not that dissimilar.

“The stresses are very different and there are some small things that we would have to change, but they [the differences] are smaller than you might think,” Moers commented.

Even though the Mercedes-AMG V6 hybrid has been the powertrain capable of winning the Formula 1 championship for the last two seasons, the cars have still had their failures. Moers, though, thinks that’s a smaller problem than it looks.

“The stresses a Formula 1 engine goes through in its life cycles are incredible, especially compared to the stresses in a road-car engine. Even a high-performance road car engine.

“The thermal efficiency those guys are getting out of that F1 engine are unbelievable. They’re out over 40 per cent and we are targeting 40 per cent efficiency for our engine.

“It will still rev out to more than 10,000rpm, closer to 11,000 as a road car,” he said.

Formula 1 cars currently rev to 15,000rpm.

Moers suggested the hypercar’s volume wouldn’t necessarily be limited, but expected a run of between 200 and 300 cars would be built over about two years.

All will be assembled in Affalterbach, Moers confirmed. He wouldn’t even hint at price, though.

The mid-engined car will almost certainly use the active aerodynamics banned in Formula 1, along with active ride height, massive under-body venturis and tremendous brake-energy recuperation capacity.

Insisting the car would look exactly like it did in the sketch, Moers said AMG looked at a traditionally-powered hypercar, but it failed to pique its interest or meet its future business model.

“A car like this is showing what our way to the future will look like,” Moers said.

“We weren’t interested in doing another traditional fast car. It had to be technically like this, with a powertrain that takes us forward, not backwards,” he stated.