International. Axalta Coating Systems is an official equipment supplier for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport. Spies Hecker, one of Axalta's premium finishing paint brands, for more than four years has been responsible for the paint on the previous championship-winning Silver Arrows, as well as on this year's car, the Mercedes-AMG F1 W09 EQ Power+.
"Unlike most body shops, we know the exact colours we will be working with throughout the season," said Andrew Moody, head of paint and graphics at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport.
Between the main base layer Permahyd Hi-TEC 480, highly reflective silver – a colour developed by the team with Spies Hecker in 2013 called Stirling Silver, named after Sir Stirling Moss who drove Mercedes-Benz in 1955 – to black, there are four additional shades of silver, classified from one to four, none of which are commercially available.
"There are around 100 different components in rotation at any given time, in addition to all the spare parts that correspond to each race, so we face a unique set of challenges, among which the scale stands out," Moody said. "We mixed Stirling Silver in 12-litre batches, which would be ridiculous in a normal body shop."
While the final look of the Mercedes-AMG F1 W09 EQ Power+ is important, "for us it's all ultimately about weight and aerodynamics," Moody said. "Acceptable tolerances for an aerodynamic part could be 0.3 mm, which would be minuscule for most restorers. But what we share with many bodies around the world is that we are confident in the excellent reliability, consistency and speed of application of Spies Hecker."
