How Mercedes built an unstoppable F1 force

Mercedes made history last season by becoming the first Formula 1 team to successfully defend the drivers' and constructors' championships across a major change of chassis regulations. Historically, new rules have been introduced to end a period of sustained dominance by one team, but Mercedes was having none of it.

Picking up where it left off in 2016, the Silver Arrows won 12 of the 20 races, started 15 of them from pole position and wrapped up both championships early. In doing so, it moved level with Red Bull into fifth on the all-time constructors' title list with four, three behind the original Lotus team, four adrift of McLaren, five behind Williams and 12 back from Ferrari.

It is the first team to achieve 10 or more wins in four straight seasons and it was only the fourth time in F1 history that a team has managed to win four successive championships - McLaren (1988-1991), Ferrari (2000-04) and Red Bull (2010-13) were the others. But its achievement statistically is the most impressive.

F1's most dominant teams

"There are many people in this team that go back quite some way and continuously, the group grew and grew together," Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff tells Autosport when asked how it managed to achieve such dominance.

"This is our strength that we play. Each of us plays in our area of competence. It is the effort of the collective group and it starts with the catering guys and goes all the way up to the board of directors at Daimler."

Like every manufacturer that enters F1, Daimler demands success and a return on its investment. But crucially, it afforded Mercedes time to meet those goals. It wasn't until the third season of the factory project that the team secured its first victory and not until the fifth that it won its first world championship. But on reaching that peak, it utilised the strong foundations it meticulously put in place to stay there and has been unbeaten since.

Engine chief Andy Cowell highlights the staff - which number around 1300 across Mercedes' chassis and engine programmes - as key to this sustained success.

"Everything's down to people," he tells Autosport. "It's the product of skill and enthusiasm. Both need to be good. If there's no skill but lots of enthusiasm it doesn't work, if there's skill but no enthusiasm it doesn't work.

"It is also about giving people time for training, time to learn on the job and feedback about how they've approached both the scientific challenges we have but also the human challenges that we all have on a minute-by-minute basis. The enthusiasm is important because everybody is fundamentally wired to want to get better on a day-by-day basis. So to improve people's skills you naturally get a boost of enthusiasm."

With that in mind, Cowell says Mercedes puts a sharp focus on looking after its staff. That's everything from sizeable bonuses for every staff member for winning the championship down to little things like making sure there's enough car parking spaces - a common gripe among staff in many other F1 teams - or that good coffee is available.

"Turning up to work and not being able to park a car close to work can set people off to a shocking start to the day," says Cowell. "If you want people to work in an outstanding way you have to provide the right environment. That's everything down to good food available at work. If the food's awful then people's motivation drops before, through and after the lunchbreak. All drinks at work are complementary and it's ground coffee that's available. It provides a 'plus one' that helps with the enthusiasm."

Culture is important. At Ferrari, staff are fearful of admitting to mistakes as they have families to feed and can't afford to be fired. Wolff says Mercedes tries to foster an open forum.

"We encourage everybody in the organisation to speak up," he says. "We have a motto 'See it, say it, fix it' which means that you have to create a safe environment for everybody to speak up. You need to be able to improve as a part of the team and what we try to do from the very senior leadership is to blame the problem and not the individual.

"That is an easy phrase, you know it is easy to say 'well that is what we do'. It is in human nature to try to identify a guilty person, it is easy because it is a pressure release. We're working really hard to not do that because the moment you do, people close up like a shell and you won't see any innovation, you won't see any risk taking."

James Allison left Ferrari in the summer of 2016, joining Mercedes ahead of last season in the role of technical director.

In 2016, after Rosberg and Hamilton collided in the Spanish Grand Prix, Mercedes inspected 1200 car parts that were either damaged, quarantined or needed some sort of work ahead of the next race

"The most marked difference is by no means related to the fact that one team is at the peak of its powers and the others are attempting to become better each year," he says. "The difference is much more that the culture and ethos of this company is unusually different. The team trusts each layer to a very, very high degree so people at quite junior levels are empowered to make decisions and that works all the way up through the organisation.

"The technical director is much less the moment by moment lynchpin that is making decision after decision, sort of like a machine gun, which is what it feels like a bit in other places - and that wasn't something I enjoyed! There are very, very competent people who are making decisions that would normally be the fiefdom of the technical director in other organisations and it works really tremendously well."

By empowering people, the hope is Mercedes can minimise the pain when change comes about. Paddy Lowe had become an integral part of the Mercedes operation, sharing the executive director title with Wolff, but he left for Williams ahead of last season. A departure of his stature could have destabilised a team - but it didn't.

"You can't freeze an organisation because it is successful," says Wolff. "You need to look after the next generation of leaders. Therefore, you will see this organisation develop and younger engineers and mechanics and management coming up.

"This organisation is not dependent on a single individual, not Paddy, not James, not Andy, not myself, nobody. We have a strong base of individuals that do a tremendous job that would deserve much more visibility and external recognition for the awesome jobs they do. So when a senior person leaves the team it will not affect the organisation because the base is so strong."

An example of that empowerment in action is Wolff's decision not to sit on the pitwall like most team bosses.

"The pitwall is the operational group that deploys the car and the strategy during the race," says Wolff. "I trust them, I empower them and it is my conscious decision of making that clear that they are in charge by not sitting on the pitwall. By staying in the garage I have the full bandwidth - I can take all the information in, I am hearing all the channels, I can look at all the data, the TV feed, and it allows me to be an information provider for what is happening in the race."

Mercedes is split across two sites - Brackley houses the F1 team's chassis operation while Brixworth is the engine hub. A close working relationship between the two, that ensures strong integration between the two components that make up a racing car, is something Mercedes is always striving to improve.

"The key is we are all passionate about making the fastest possible race car, and everything gets equated to lap time, that's a common currency," Cowell says. "James and his team are thinking about downforce and tyres and vehicle dynamics, we're thinking about horsepower and electrical energy and number of laps that we can run at full power, etc.

"We're both thinking about mass, but all of it comes down to we want the car to always finish and we always want it to be the fastest car on the track, and so we bring everything back to that. It is a case of James and I working together to make the fastest car covering the classic things that you come across, and those things are referring to issues of the day if needs be but also, what should we be doing in four years' time? We're thinking short- and long-term."

Mercedes tries to give itself options and leave nothing to chance. For 2017, chief designer John Owen described the world champion Mercedes W08 as "a 90% car" as it had more flexibility factored into its design than the previous car to give the team room to react to things that came up in the first year of new regulations.

"You need to respect every team. We are taking Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Renault seriously. These guys can fight for a championship." Mercedes boss Toto Wolff

And in 2016, after Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton collided in the Spanish Grand Prix, the team inspected 1200 car parts that were either damaged, quarantined or needed some sort of work ahead of the next race, requiring staff to work through the weekend to prepare the cars.

Another key to its continued success is the way the driver situation played out. The difficult relationship between Rosberg and Hamilton was creating internal division within the Mercedes camp. When Rosberg called it quits, with Valtteri Bottas stepping in, the cloud of tension was removed.

"If there was to be little animosity, I thought that would be good for both Mercedes and the drivers, because they would push each other on," says Wolff. "The truth is we weren't able to control it with Nico and Lewis, because there was too much baggage from the past.

"The dynamic between Valtteri and Lewis made us develop the car in a very efficient way and made us win the two championships and so not for one second do I regret where we are today. The mindset and the relationship between the two made us stronger, it gave an open and honest environment.

"The exchange with the engineers is very transparent and very clear. Our very fast, difficult car - we got it into a good place because the two worked so well together."

Soon after Mercedes rounded off the 2017 F1 campaign with a dominant victory over Ferrari in Abu Dhabi, Wolff urged his team to remain diligent about the job it needs to do to stay ahead, particularly given the threat Ferrari had posed over the year.

"This is the pinnacle of motor racing and you need to respect every team and the top drivers," says Wolff. "We are taking Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Renault seriously. These guys can fight for a championship and some others might be surprising us.

"I want to remain humble and expect competition next year from these teams and if we are able to align the dots like we have done in the last year then we will be winning races and then we will be fighting for championships and if we don't then we haven't been good enough."

It is that kind of mentality that will stand the team in good stead as it bids to make it five from five in 2018.