Mercedes-AMG One: An F1-Engined Hypercar

According to Maro, it has more in it.
One Owner
The time is blatant when you consider that the Black Series has held the lap record as a production car on the Nordschleife for 2 years. Maro had also driven this at the time. Spoke to Maro in Barcelona about the ONE time. He said that it was wet in some places and he could have even pushed the time under 6:30. This car is really awesome and I had a lot of fun driving it in Barcelona too.
 
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You can clearly see that there's a dry line forming on the track. He lifted through that whole section because of the water.

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There's probably like 7 seconds still in there, but I'm curious to see if they decide to run again considering they have no competition. It would be easier for them in the future to leave time on the table
 
I don't know if being six seconds faster than the GT2 RS MR is impressive for the AMG or for the Porsche. Leaning towards the Porsche which is a volume production based, rear-engined, 2WD, metal unibody car with very limited underbody aero. Though the conditions didn't seem great for the AMG. Anybody know what an FIA GT3 car will do around the Nordschleife?
~10 seconds slower during the quali for the N24h for the Nordschleife without GP so around 6.40-6.45 min. (first wrote faster but I made a mistake).
Heres the pole lap from Vanthoor in 2018 in the 911. He enters the Nordschleife at 1:54 and returns to entry of the last corner into T13 straight at 8:24 which would be a 6:30 but he is missing the slower entry to T13 and the T13 straight so I would add ~10 seconds and it would be a laptime of roughly 6:40-6:45:

 
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I would be very interested how fast it would be on the 2nd lap after a 6:35. Pretty sure on 2 flying laps in a row maybe even the standard 992 GT3 RS with it's "low" 525 hp would be faster than the Merc while it is around 14 seconds slower on a single flying lap. But as soon as the batteries are empty quick times are gone in the One. They already had this "problem" of battery deployment and how to use it with the 918 Spyder some years ago and had to admit it wasn't possible doing 2 quick laps in a row due to missing battery power on lap 2 and even hadn't have enough battery left for the full Döttinger Höhe straight on Lap 1.
 
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I would be very interested how fast it would be on the 2nd lap after a 6:35. Pretty sure on 2 flying laps in a row maybe even the standard 992 GT3 RS with it's "low" 525 hp would be faster than the Merc while it is around 14 seconds slower on a single flying lap. But as soon as the batteries are empty quick times are gone in the One. They already had this "problem" of battery deployment and how to use it with the 918 Spyder some years ago and had to admit it wasn't possible doing 2 quick laps in a row due to missing battery power on lap 2 and even hadn't have enough battery left for the full Döttinger Höhe straight on Lap 1.
I'm going to assume Merc. has figured it out.

Cort Wagner attended the Barcelona invitation where 4 Ones were running & didn't make any comment on the batteries whilst also sharing the cars were being flogged for 5 days without issue.
Blown away by The One and their reliability all week with customers beating on them for hours and hours every day with ZERO mechanical issues
Super impressive how fast and how reliable these things were all week. Tires and fuel only for 5 days of a thorough track flogging. All four cars ran like clockwork.
 
I'd love to know how fast an SF90 Stradale can go round, as that's the car most testers said is closest to in performance. Still a mighty impressive laptime considering the damp conditions (and I assume it's using tyres that are not very good unless it's bone dry).

Comparisons with a GT3 car is moot. The slicks alone probably worth at least 10 secs laptime. Also I agree with someone saying the batteries won't last another lap. Surely they put it in quali mode and dumped everything on the Dottinger. If you're driving in other less aggressive modes then sure you can do laps all day long, but it won't give the ultimate 1 lap pace. That's the whole point of using the F1 engine and the myriad of deployment modes it provides.

Based on this I predict the base Valkyrie will do somewhere in 6:10-6:20s.
 
Interestingly Chris mentioned the reason why the gear changes are so slow is so they can "waste" the excess electricity produced by torque filling. Can't say I understand why, when they can just use the extra electricity to give extra oomph down the straights and keep the fast gear changes like in the actual F1 car. Then again I don't have the brains of these engineers.
 
Apparently the car is still in the development stages. There's just a lot of electronics going on.

 
I don't know how impressive that is in the context of a 42-year-old Porsche 956 going nearly 20 seconds faster (or the far more conventional, old school Aventador SVJ going only 15 seconds slower.) On the one hand it's a road car vs a race car, but on the other hand it's significantly more powerful, has a lightning quick gearbox, "F1 tech", and theoretically has significant advancements in aerodynamics. The 956 is nearly a ton lighter though and was presumably on full racing tires...so I guess classical physics and raw mechanical grip (and an absolute unit of a driver) rules at the end of the day.
 
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The 956 record was a 6:11, so not 30, but 18 seconds faster than the Merc. I don’t know in what world that’s not impressive from a road car.
 
AMG's CEO thinks AMG owners chose their cars for the technology, not for the brash V8.

And that's when you know your CEO needs to be fired.
This is genuinely hilarious

Customers who came to the brand because of the V8 did not come because they just wanted to have a big engine

One of, if not AMG's first full products, was called Hammer.

AMG became significantly less interesting after the M156 and M113/K engines were retired.

edit: This is the guy

The Chairman of the Board of Management of Mercedes AMG GmbH is the manager, Michael Schiebe. He has been with the Group since 2004. At that time still at Daimler AG, Schiebe started his career around strategic product projects, then moved to Controlling and later to Marketing and Sales. Among other things, he also served as President & CEO of Mercedes-Benz Luxembourg and was responsible for Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars Sales in Germany. From 2020 to 2023, he reported to CEO Ola Källenius as Chief of Staff and Head of Corporate Office. Schiebe has now been CEO of Mercedes-AMG since March 2023.

You know you've lost your edge when you put the marketing and sales guy in charge of the enthusiast division. Lets not forget that AMG was founded as a separate company by two Mercedes Benz engineers. Mercedes-AMG has definitely become en****tified.
 
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I bet they put the marketing guy in charge of AMG because they know trying to uphold a brand image while selling uninspiring crap is a serious marketing problem. Orrrrr they could simply not sell uninspiring crap?

Environmentalism is destroying the German automotive and motorsports industry and the sad part is they like it.
 
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I'm not exactly sure this is about environmentalism, rather a fundemental misunderstanding of what people are looking for in an AMG car. They thought F1 derived tech would be enough to make people throw money at them, while clearly AMG buyers value the visceral experience and those who don't care about it and want ultimate performance above the intangibles have no reason to go with something like the new C63 when EVs like the Tesla Plaid are way faster.
 
I think environmentalism has become a hallmark of German culture to the point where it is harming some of their industries, in particular their motorsports industry. They can't even sell tickets to F1 races anymore, DTM has been reduced to a GT3 class rather than any sort of technological showcase, even the Nurburgring which is somehow packed full every day has been on the brink of bankruptcy for years. Over the next decade I think we're going to see German car brands wrestle with their own brands and struggle to maintain their status in the market, which is unfortunate because their premium stature should allow them to keep creating highly profitable low-production vehicles. Instead, it's been a race to the bottom with AMG 23 this and a little less S that.
 
I think environmentalism has become a hallmark of German culture to the point where it is harming some of their industries, in particular their motorsports industry. They can't even sell tickets to F1 races anymore, DTM has been reduced to a GT3 class rather than any sort of technological showcase, even the Nurburgring which is somehow packed full every day has been on the brink of bankruptcy for years. Over the next decade I think we're going to see German car brands wrestle with their own brands and struggle to maintain their status in the market, which is unfortunate because their premium stature should allow them to keep creating highly profitable low-production vehicles. Instead, it's been a race to the bottom with AMG 23 this and a little less S that.
BMW & MB have been hollowing out the quality of their vehicles for a solid decade now even without the environmentalism aspect. I suspect it's rampant cost cutting in pursuit of bigger margins for better looking balance sheets for bigger pay days for the executives. Basically, en****tification through and through. VAG hasn't been as bad or aggressive, IMO, but even they are trending downhill now too. I think the problem is probably widespread throughout the German economy and representative of the greater societal problem of people wanting to do nothing else but make money.

But maaaan are we off topic from the AMG One :lol:
 
But maaaan are we off topic from the AMG One :lol:
We're kind of still on topic actually and this car is a good example. We're having the exact same disussions about this car that we were having two years ago when it debuted, and somehow this unique looking car has still failed to capture our hearts and minds. A while back they admitted they were having development issues with the car but two years after it's debut I'm still not even sure if it is a real driveable car yet. How the hell hard can it be? Mclaren has debuted like three differe hypercars in that amount of time.

EDIT: Apparently Schmee's friend has just taken delivery.



It's been so long that I'm not even excited about this thing anymore because after its debut they still had two entire years of development time before delivering any. Ridiculous.
 
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We're kind of still on topic actually and this car is a good example. We're having the exact same disussions about this car that we were having two years ago when it debuted, and somehow this unique looking car has still failed to capture our hearts and minds. A while back they admitted they were having development issues with the car but two years after it's debut I'm still not even sure if it is a real driveable car yet. How the hell hard can it be? Mclaren has debuted like three differe hypercars in that amount of time.

EDIT: Apparently Schmee's friend has just taken delivery.



It's been so long that I'm not even excited about this thing anymore because after its debut they still had two entire years of development time before delivering any. Ridiculous.

Its ugly and it has an unpleasant sounding engine that makes less power (ICE only) than the AMG M159 6.2 and only lasts 30,000 miles. These are the primary reasons I dislike it, regardless of the development hell. Using a Formula 1 engine outside of the context of Formula 1 regulations...particular for application in a road car....is just dumb, IMO. If the question is - will it sell? Then MB-AMG has come up with a winner - but honestly that's not hard in the present moment with billionaires throwing money at anything and everything that might distinguish them from the next guy. What I like about Bugatti, Pagani, and GMA is that they keep* making magnificent things, for the sake of it**, not just technology showcases. Even if I don't quite love the Pagani Utopia, I still find it magnificently desirable in a way that the AMG ONE (and the Valkyrie and whatever Red Bull builds) just leaves me dead cold. The tie-in to F1 is obvious, but I find it hard to get excited about it. What gets me excited is an 8.3L Cosworth V16 spinning at 9,000RPM and a marvelous interior.

*Well, GMA is hard to quantify because the company is relatively new

**While they are all very wealthy, I think that Mate Rimac, Horacio Pagani, and Gordon Murray would still be doing exactly what they're doing if they were paid a conventional salary, they are building cars because it's their passion and it shows in the results. Bugatti was interesting before, but a little corporate feeling. With Rimac onboard, I think they are significantly more interesting.
 
The Valkyrie and the Red Bull RB 17 hypercars are also a way to cheat the F1 cost cap/wind tunnel & cfd restrictions and gaining valueable informations and knowledge by experimenting with floor ideas for the F1 cars on "roadcars". One of those open secrets in the paddock and apart from having problems getting the F1 engine road legal Mercedes would've been dumb not trying themself with the disadvantage of beeing too early with the AMG One and using another aero philosophy with more active aero than Aston/RB with their nearly floor only aero designs.
 
It's been so long that I'm not even excited about this thing anymore because after its debut they still had two entire years of development time before delivering any. Ridiculous.
That's nothing really new in the Exotic world. The 918 debuted in 2020 & journalists were driving prototypes before the production version debuted 2013. Gordon Murray showed the T.33 2 years ago; that's planned to finally start production in a few months. His T.50 Lauda debuted 3 years ago with the Prototype finally debuting at Goodwood this year. The Bugatti Tourbillion that was just shown isn't expected to come off the line til' 2026. I believe the Valkyrie has gone through a similar process.


You say ridiculous, but completely normal at the same time. That's how these companies secure their deposits & sell out before average Joes ever know about the car.
 
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