Mercedes unveils 'innovative' F1 W05

Mercedes AMG Petronas has become the latest team to reveal its 2014 world championship contender, after pulling the covers off the new F1 W05 at the Circuito de Jerez.

Ahead of the first morning of official winter testing, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton took the wraps off the first all-new Silver Arrow to hit the track since 1954. Designed from the ground up as an integrated project between the Mercedes-Benz teams based at Brackley and Brixworth, this new car marks an historic milestone in a landmark year when Mercedes-Benz celebrates 120 years of Motorsport and the 80th anniversary of the Silver Arrows.

With the 2014 F1 season marking perhaps the biggest change in regulations in the sport's history, initial engineering conversations between the teams at Brackley and Brixworth dated back to late 2010. Since mid-2011, when the rules for the new V6 Hybrid Power Unit were officially published, Mercedes-Benz has taken a fully integrated approach to every major performance decision with a clear-sighted focus on maximising overall car performance.

The result is the new F1 W05 and, at its heart, the PU106A Hybrid Power Unit, both designed to meet the challenge of a fundamental change in the philosophy of F1. The introduction of a demanding maximum race fuel allowance of just 100kg per race, coupled with a maximum fuel flow rate of 100 kg/hour, have focused the efforts of the sport's engineers on delivering performance with a set of innovative new technologies that achieve an efficiency gain of more than 30 per cent. The F1 W05 will therefore deliver over one third more performance from every unit of fuel consumed, a development story that places the new Hybrid F1 at the cutting edge of automotive technology - and puts the sport on the same development path as the wider automotive industry.

"It is always exciting to pull the wraps off a new car for the first time,but even more so at the start of this momentous 2014 season," team director Toto Wolff commented, "Our new Silver Arrow is the result of a single-minded, integrated approach between our engineering teams. My compliments and thanks go to every team member in Brackley, at Brixworth and also at our key partner, Petronas, for their hard work to deliver this new car and the Power Unit at its heart.

"It is the result of several years of intense effort, but we know that the adventure has only just begun. We have a busy winter testing period ahead of us and a long season where both performance and reliability will be critically important. Lewis and Nico begin the season hungry for success and I am confident that our team will benefit thanks to the continuity of their work during the winter period. We have positive momentum after our second-place finish last season. Our clear target is to continue building up our team and we aim to deliver on every single race weekend in 2014."