News: Big win for Mercedes AMG engine

Mercedes-AMG wins award for their 2009 KERS Hybrid power unit. By Jerrica Leong

It’s turning into an all Mercedes year for Formula One indeed. We know that the Petronas Mercedes AMG team won the constructors championship in Sochi recently and everybody is holding their breath in anticipation to see which Mercedes driver would win the World Championship. But before the driver’s championship is decided the Mercedes-AMG HPP has already won another award.

The Royal Automobile Club’s Dewar Trophy is awarded when the Club’s expert committees believes that there are contenders of sufficient merit, with winners joining a remarkable line-up of automotive greats. This year the club is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Dewar, they took the opportunity to pay tribute to Mercedes-Benz’s 120 years of motorsport success and a new technological era for Formula One.

Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (HPP), Brixworth, is a 1.6-litre V6 Hybrid Turbo, known to the team as PU106A Hybrid Power Unit. It not only dominated the first season under the Formula One rule change this year but is also one of the most thermally efficient gasoline powertrains ever produced.

Mercedes-Benz has an association with hybrid technology and motorsport that dates back over a century. The Mercedes Mixte race car of 1907, the engine employs a serial hybrid drive incorporating a gasoline engine and a dynamo that converted energy of the engine into electric energy. The Mercedes-Benz KERS Hybrid system powered Lewis Hamilton to the first ever Hybrid Formula One victory at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix 102 years later.

Among the winners of this prestigious award, there have only been four from the Formula One industry. The team at Brixworth is the fourth member of the Formula One community to win the award for their pioneering work on the KERS Hybrid unit that was introduced for the 2009 season.