Mercedes issue update on development of ‘world-class’ campus of the future

Henry Valantine 16 Aug 2023 9:00 PM

Mercedes have offered an update on their factory developments that the team say will create a “world-class” facility for their team when finished.

Operations at Mercedes are split between two facilities at Brackley and Brixworth, for their race team and High Performance Powertrains divisions.

But with work at Brackley ongoing to make the team’s base even better than it was before, with Mercedes operating from the base that held BAR, Honda and Brawn beforehand, the Silver Arrows are looking to the future for the whole team.

Mercedes creating facilities to become ‘truly world-class’ for its staff

Keeping on top of infrastructure remains a vital part of a Formula 1 team’s operation, with new technology vital to a team’s success.

With this new update released onMercedes’ YouTube channel, the team have offered more insight into how they are building their updated facilities that will keep them at the forefront of Formula 1.

Rob Thomas, Mercedes chief operations officer said: “The plans that have been recently communicated are just the next phase of a large programme that’s been running now for at least four years. When they are done, we’ll end up with facilities that are truly world-class.

“It is really important as a team that we create facilities for our people. Our people are our most important asset and having facilities where they can come to work and they are really proud to be there ultimately leads to performance.

“The work we have done already over the last four years has focussed mainly on the manufacturing and design areas. We’ve completely redeveloped the machine shop, the composite and the build areas and a lot of the offices.

“Our focus now moves to some of the outside areas, so we are going to build a brand new building to house a gym, a restaurant and general wellbeing centre. And at the front of the site, we are going to build another new building which will house marketing, finance, commercial and create something that is truly impressive when you drive onto the site.”

Mike Elliott, chief technical officer said: “Formula 1 is about how can you learn faster than your competitors and if you learn faster than your competitors you can turn those ideas, those thoughts into designs and into bits that make the car go faster. And the only way you can generate that learning is some from the track and some from the tools and techniques we’ve got in the factory.

“So, all the rigs that we’ve got, the wind tunnel etc. that’s where we do a lot of our learning. I’ve got a very good team of people and they are all looking at what’s the next step? There is an old adage in Formula 1 that if you are standing still, you are actually going backwards and that’s because the pace of development is really high.

“Formula 1 has marched forward in time, it’s grown, those buildings have grown with us and adapted to what we’ve got and being able to build a specific marketing building, to be able to build a proper hub and wellbeing centre and gym I think itself is going to be big steps forward.

“But in terms of this building where most of the engineers are sited, it’s going to be an opportunity to develop more breakout spaces and improve the ability to collaborate, have better quality meeting rooms than we’ve got at the moment, all things that might seem small but if you think that your most important asset is your people, giving them the best places to work in, that’s what we really need to create because if we can improve the facilities we’ve got, we can improve the capabilities of the people we’ve got, we are going to produce a better product, we are going to produce something that has got a better chance of winning races and winning championships.”

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爱丽丝Ashpitel,梅赛德斯的可持续性dded: “Sustainability is important to the team because we have already seen the impacts of climate change globally and we have this really exciting opportunity, we sit at this intersection of sport and technology.

“So, we can provide really exciting races every other weekend, but we can also have the brain power to adopt solutions that can really make a change. A lot of what we do needs to consider our whole footprint.

“So, trackside we are looking to reduce the impact of our freight, logistics and people transport and that’s where we have developed our sustainable fuel strategy. So, that’s increasing the amount of bio fuels we use on the European season and using sustainable aviation fuel wherever possible to move our people and our freight. And then here at the factory where we can’t always touch on some of those logistics items, it’s about bringing sustainability to everybody here and allowing it to be part of their day to day.

“So, the new campus developments are really important for the team’s sustainability ambitions to become the world’s most sustainable professional sports team. We’re going to be able to not only reduce our emissions, but we are also going to be able to reduce our resource consumption which is critical as we move forward. So, we are looking at reducing water consumption per day per person by about 50 percent and increasing the amount of waste we can recycle onsite up to 60 percent. We will also have a great opportunity to improve biodiversity.

“The two new buildings that we are designing will be net zero in operation and they will also be backed by 100 percent renewable energy both onsite and offsite. Onsite generation is really important because it will allow us to have our own secure renewable supply of solar panels powering some of the site activities. This ensures that we are adding capacity to the national grid and ensuring that renewable supplies are growing in the UK.”