Evo kolega @zekohodna
Back in 2009 it seemed unthinkable that Mercedes would come to dominate Formula 1 - it didn't even have its own team. But a decision made two years before that bore fruit at the '09 Hungarian GP, and it’s still feeding the marque’s success to this day
Mercedes' tribute to 125 years of motor racing, and its own role in that milestone, last weekend was a gloriously colourful commemoration of a crucial part of history.
Although the German Grand Prix did not go to plan, Mercedes heads to Hungary this weekend knowing an immediate recovery victory is likely, if not a foregone conclusion. That means it has the chance to honour a different anniversary, one that carries a much lower profile, with a win.
Few would have considered it a harbinger of things to come when Lewis Hamilton scored what was effectively a consolation victory in a disappointing 2009 campaign with McLaren. But it did mark a seminal moment in Mercedes' modern history, laying the foundation for everything Hamilton and the works Mercedes squad have achieved since 2014, and what Mercedes is eyeing as its next challenge.
Hamilton's win in the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix was the first Mercedes hybrid success in F1. Scratch that, it was the first hybrid success in F1, period. And Hamilton acknowledged that the Mercedes KERS system in his McLaren played "a big part" in his race-winning pass on Mark Webber, having deployed his allowance fully on the start-finish straight to get by.
The kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) introduced that year, giving drivers a 60kW (roughly 80bhp) boost, was only raced by four teams during the campaign and two of them, Renault and BMW, ditched it before the year ended. It was a technically demanding innovation, harvesting energy to be deployed as electric power for the first time.
The extent of the challenge was such that Mercedes committed to making the step into the unknown back in 2007. It viewed this as vital to be able to make the giant leap to much more complex and more integrated hybrid technology in the medium-term future: for this, read the 2014 engine regulations.
Mercedes' grasp of those regulations set the tone for a period of domination that endures today. Sure, it has raised its game on the chassis side during that time, and emerged this year - through a second aerodynamic rule change – ahead of the pack. But its hybrid engine prowess was key early on. And soon, those learnings will be put into practice in ABB FIA Formula E, as F1's dominant modern manufacturer prepares for its first season in the electric single-seater series with its first fully electric powertrain.
The easy connection to make is that Mercedes has conquered F1 and its ultra-complicated hybrid system, and therefore its high-efficiency and high-performance MGU-K technology will transfer quite sweetly to an FE motor. But the first key success came with KERS 10 years ago, and its full history actually stretches slightly further.
"Formula 1 has had a high-voltage electric propulsion system since 2009," Mercedes High Performance Powertrains head Andy Cowell tells Motorsport.com. "It was 60kW to start off with and then a 120kW step for 2014. Of course that makes it easier to take the transition to Formula E, and Formula E initially used a 120kW McLaren motor.
"It helps having a higher-power electric system in F1 to take that transition. But it's not so crucial. A high-performing 60kW system [ie KERS] scaled up to 250kW, versus a high-performing 120kW scaled up to 250kW, are fairly similar journeys.
"It goes all the way back to Mercedes deciding it would do its own KERS system when the regulations came out in 2007. That's the point where serious electric propulsion in Mercedes' motorsport arsenal started."
It is no secret that Mercedes was an excited participant in the discussions over the engine formula that was introduced in 2014. A major manufacturer with a major stake in F1 would be foolish not to have major foresight as well.
The buzz of activity at Mercedes' HPP headquarters in Brixworth is vivid proof that what it chose to do back in 2007 stretches well beyond the F1 titles of '14 to '18 (and counting).
Cowell reckons the FE group at Brixtworth is "80% constructed" from F1 engineers, but Mercedes has also developed a devoted and experienced supply chain, and is working on its half-electric, half-internal-combustion-engined Project One Hypercar. He describes it "like climbing three different mountains, and each of the teams has an exciting journey to get to their summit". And it all goes back to 2007.
"The decision was taken to put that investment in Brixworth," says Cowell. "On motors, inverters, electronics and software to control it, as well as state-of-creation magnets, rotor dynamics: that whole sort of technology stream to make an efficient, useful, smart electric drive system."
Infrastructure is undeniably important, particularly as Mercedes has added more and more electricity to its "motorsport arsenal". What the call to commit to this 12 years ago did was not just give Mercedes a long, stable platform to build a KERS system and refine it for the later, uprated F1 ERS, but it could fast-track the process of "downsizing some of the electronic components from something the size of a house brick to the size of your dictaphone!". It also allowed it to understand these systems, not all of them visible to the naked eye, which have increased in output but been streamlined in function.
"The losses have come down with that," says Cowell. "The peripheral systems have reduced but also some of the software [has become less muddled]. The energy deployment strategy we had in 2014 was far better than anybody else's in the pitlane. We've evolved it, and that is directly applicable to Formula E.
"There are very tangible examples – where you can put a house brick next to a dictaphone – but then there are intangible aspects like the creativity and processing power, and smart energy deployment that's gone into making sure you always optimally deploy the energy in a Formula 1 race. Which is absolutely the game in Formula E."
Under team principal and CEO Toto Wolff, Mercedes has adopted a challenging mindset: the real-world equivalent of glib social media phrases like #betterneverstops. It gets scoffed at sometimes. But Wolff says the internal motto that the team "truly cares about each other is not some kind of tree-hugging sentence". Cowell agrees that Mercedes' ability to evolve comes down to exactly that: "the mindset of the team of people and the engineering processes".
"You need a group of people, a society, that has this attitude of what they've just introduced into racing is now old hat, and it's possible to do it better," Cowell continues. "You never say 'that's perfect' or 'that's optimum', you say 'that's where it is today and tomorrow it's going to be significantly better'.
"And you make sure that introduction isn't delayed, and that's where motorsport is a wonderful technology-development breeding ground at a high pace."
That argument is often cited by manufacturers as a reason for committing to a series with new technologies: it is the calling card of most new FE entrants, for example. Mercedes is striking out with its FE entry because it is adding it to F1, a combination Cowell says "fits beautifully" with the company's wider motif. Again, this major move has not been the work of a moment or the reaction to an unavoidable trend. Its roots lie much deeper.
"Back in 2009, Mercedes decided that a Formula 1 team is the right motorsport platform, and were hugely supportive of the '14 regulations which started to be created in '11," says Cowell. "That's when the FIA said 'we want to turn F1 into an energy conversion formula, because we feel that's where the world is going – whether it's internal combustion engine efficiency or electric propulsion conversion efficiency, we want a set of regulations you can develop and showcase both'.
"I think that is highly road-relevant today. The technology in the garages is bang on the money for today's road relevance."
That road relevance completes a perfect set, as far as Mercedes is concerned. Its journey over the past 12 years, since first committing to hybrid technology in a motorsport environment, has blazed a trail.
Mercedes has transformed a concept – its first hybrid technology, KERS – into a race-winning reality, then used that as the foundation for the engine that won 16 of 19 races in 2014, qualified on pole at every grand prix and scored 43 podium finishes.
Now, it is still winning in F1, but preparing for new racing and automotive challenges at the same time. What was once a contentious add-on has evolved into a core component of Mercedes' domination in F1 and is powering ambitions beyond that.
Perhaps, this weekend, little time or thought will be given to that seminal moment in Hungary a decade ago, when Mercedes gave the first signs of the transformation that was to come.
But it is a testament to that 10-year-old success, and the commitment that predated it, that Mercedes heads back to Hungary with yet another victory in its sight, edging ever closer to another hybrid-powered title.
Fino Alla Fine