It is not an easy task to turn an engine that is meant for the top class of motorsport into one that is suitable for a road car. But that’s what Mercedes-AMG started dealing with the One. Now the final iteration of the drive is ready to hit the track for high-speed testing.
Mercedes-AMG announced on Tuesday that the One has entered the important test phase after some long delays. With the final engineering work completed, the highest ranking Project One managers gave the green light to test the car with full power: 1,000 horsepower, to be exact. And not one test car either, but several. It’s clear that the One has made significant progress since we last saw the supercar tests in 2018.
For those outside Formula One circles, sitting in the middle of the supercar is a turbocharged 1.6-liter V6 engine coupled with four electric motors. It is the exact unit that drives the company’s F1 cars every weekend during the season, and Mercedes has completely dominated in recent years. It also helps that Lewis Hamilton will roll the car to victory, but there is no denying that the German team has completely eliminated its power unit.
And what’s wild is the sound translated from the F1 car to the One street car. The video delivers a few snippets of audio from the supercar as it flies around the track and it’s awesome to hear the sound on anything other than a Grand Prix circuit. Mercedes-AMG emphasized that it was a hell of a business; unless you are running at maximum performance, so should the One operate in a fully electric mode. As the car jumps around, F1 cars are not the quietest machines on the planet, and so careful consideration is given to something that could actually meet production standards.
All in all, the high performance testing engineers also let work on the complex active aerodynamics system. With so much at work, the company wants to ensure that the One delivers on its promises for handling.
After testing wraps on AMG’s own evidence, the team plans to take the supercar to the ‘Ring; the Nürburgring, that is. Deliveries of the One are expected to begin in 2021 and each will cost $ 2.72 million. Not that it matters, because by all 275 cars now spoken.
See again:
Mercedes-AMG Project One: Formula 1 power in a road car
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