AMG branding is expected to feature more prominently on Mercedes’ Formula One cars next year after parent company Daimler laid out its plans for its future commitment to the sport.
The news comes after months of speculation that Daimler was considering selling its F1 team — a rumour that was repeatedly dismissed by both Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius.
The F1 team is already called the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team, but Daimler wants to deepen the links between its performance brand AMG and its on-track success.
The team is on the brink of a seventh consecutive world title this year and with the incoming budget cap is aiming to become cost neutral for its parent company over the coming years.
The AMG announcement was made on Tuesday as part of a Mercedes-Benz strategy update, which will see extra emphasis put on Mercedes’ sub-brands AMG, Maybach, G and EQ.
Although the company plans to push all its brands toward electrification over the coming years, it still believes the hybrid technology used in F1 will be relevant to its performance models.
Kallenius used the example of the Project One hypercar, which is powered by a modified F1 engine, as an example of technology transfer between motorsport and the AMG brand.
“Formula One as the pinnacle of motorsport, the highest form of performance, we will use the technology we have developed in Formula One for performance hybrids and other exciting technologies in the future and put that into our AMG cars,” Kallenius said.
“With Project One we are taking a Formula One powertrain and putting it on the road, so it comes naturally to us to leverage Formula One even more for AMG going forward.”
The news comes less than a week after Honda announced its decision to pull out of F1 at the end of 2021 to focus its R&D efforts on electrification.
However, Mercedes’ announcement on Tuesday indicates that Daimler still believes its F1 involvement is adding value to its brands.