Axalta Coating Systems has provided a striking Spies Hecker livery for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team during the 2017 season.
Spies Hecker, one of Axalta Coating System’s three premium refinish brands of Axalta Coating Systems has been responsible for the paint on the high-impact, instantly-recognizable liveries of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport Silver Arrows race cars for three years, including the Championship-winning 2016 Mercedes F1 W07 Hybrid car.
For the 2017 season, the Mercedes-AMG F1 W08 EQ (Electric Intelligence) Power+ car sports a Spies Hecker livery featuring electric blue visual representation of the airflow that runs across the car from the front wing to trailing edge of the side-pods.
These thin green and blue lines are designed to give the impression of speed and movement, even when the car is standing still. The design also relays the image of sparks flying over the speeding race car’s chassis, designed to provide an almost electrified appearance.
The 2017 Mercedes-AMG F1 W08 EQ Power+ race car has 13 colours, none of which are commercially available: five shades of green, three shades of blue, four shades of graphite silver, and the main colour, called Stirling Silver after Sir Stirling Moss who drove for Mercedes-Benz during the 1955 Grand Prix season.
The Spies Hecker Hi-TEC Performance System is used on the race cars and provides the unique formulations developed for the current colour scheme.
Axalta’s involvement in Formula 1 is seen as a key component of Axalta’s decades-long strategic motorsports partnerships in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America, which demonstrate the technology and durability of its coatings in high endurance racing environments.
“It takes about 150 hours to paint a race car, with the nose and rear wing each taking about 12 hours, so the speed of application and reliability is essential. We don’t have time to accept anything less than perfect and Spies Hecker delivers that for us,” said Andrew Moody, Head of Paint and Graphics, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport.
