There’s a reasonable amount of information on the cost of Formula 1 cars and how expensive accidents are for the teams, but it can be hard to understand where all of the money is going.
A new video from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team gives an insight into the workload of the racing cars. More specifically, it shows a selection of engineers working night shift in the team’s UK factory and gives us an indication of the scale of the operation.
I’ve heard F1 teams talk about working through the night in the past, but it never occurred to me that the factory was just always running, at least for a big team like Mercedes.
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It can also be hard to understand why parts out of context cost so much. Sure, carbon fiber is expensive, but it’s used in some production vehicles these days. However, the video shows you that the attention is so great that a group of workers hand sand the bottom of the car, explaining that it takes about a week to make from start to finish. And although the floor is very important for the performance of the car, it is nowhere near as dynamic as the chassis parts, which have to be laser-measured in order to ensure that they function perfectly and with millimeter precision.
For anything near the wheels, each part needs to be scanned with a laser to ensure that it exactly matches the part that was developed in the design software. Of course, if the part you are producing is not the same as the part you are designing, it makes sense that it is not working properly, and the team wants to make sure everything is 100 percent made to specification.
Combined with the amount of human attention and work that goes into making sure everything is perfect, you can see why every single part (and therefore the car as a whole) is so expensive to manufacture. And that’s exactly what happens at night.
With the effort it takes, you can also understand why the Mercedes F1 team has provided its drivers with what is usually the best car in the starting field over the past few years.
