Welcome to Objects in Mirror, a bi-weekly column from Jack Swansey that brings you the history of the greatest racecars, fables of crushing dominance and lovable underdogs, tales of what happens when brilliant minds find genius loopholes in regulations, when old dogs stick to their guns long after everyone else has given up, or visionary dares dream of dreaming but flying too close to the sun. Ultimately, these are the stories of the people who designed, built and raced these cars right into the history books.
Since its introduction in 1902, the company that is now Mercedes-Benz has had the same slogan: “the best, or nothing.”
At the end of 2019 (117 years later), the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team looked nigh-on unstoppable. Drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had locked out every Drivers’ title since the introduction of the turbo-hybrid formula in 2014, and the team had just equaled Scuderia Ferrari’s record for consecutive Constructors’ championships at six.
What’s more, Hamilton sat at second on the all-time Grand Prix wins list with 84, just eight victories behind Michael Schumacher’s all-time record. He’d beaten teammate Valtteri Bottas to the 2019 driver’s title by 87 points and outscored the best non-Mercedes driver by a whopping 135.
With stats like that, Mercedes could have rested on its laurels and showed up with little more than a copy of the previous season’s W10. But as belies its slogan, the world’s oldest automaker refused to settle for anything less than the best.
But when the F1 circus descended upon the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for preseason testing in February 2020, the buzz in the paddock at testing wasn’t about Mercedes at all, at least not at first. Not beholden to some century-old slogan, the Racing Point team had arrived with a near-perfect copy of the year-old W10, a car quickly nicknamed the “pink Mercedes” due to its BWT livery.
The Racing Point was fast, fast enough for Sergio Perez to place the car third on the timing charts at the end of the first day. But the real Mercedes, the two Mercedes-AMG W11 EQ Performances driven by Hamilton and Bottas, locked down the top two spots.
And then, after proving it had brought the fastest car, on day two of testing, Mercedes-AMG blew everybody’s minds. Exiting the final turn, then-six-time World Champion Hamilton pulled on the steering wheel of the W11 – it actually moved towards him – and the toe angle of…
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