The Paint Shop at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport in Brackley, England, looks after painting the cars, but they are also responsible for ensuring that everything from the headset ear caps to the Engineers’ Centre Station looks amazing - and they rely on Spies Hecker’s customised solutions for all of it.  

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, the reigning FIA Formula OneTM Constructors’ Champion, is well-known for its iconic livery on its Mercedes-AMG F1 W10 EQ Power+ race cars. For the last five years the Team has relied on the customised support and tailored product offerings from Spies Hecker.

For Andrew Moody, Head of Paint and Graphics at Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, and his team, the cars are only part of their job. Andrew says, “We paint everything from the ear caps on the mechanics’ headsets to the Monster-branded drinking bottles the drivers and trackside team use.”

At the heart of the garage

One of the largest pieces painted by the Paint Shop is the Engineers’ Centre Station, a mostly aluminium structure at the heart of the garage at every race weekend. This is where each driver’s engineers sit (Race Engineer, Performance Engineer, Tyre and Aero Engineers, and Power Unit Engineer). Team Principal & CEO Toto Wolff sits at the head of the Station, where he can see both engineering teams, the cars in the garage and the Pit Wall.

The predominantly carbon fibre Pit Wall Gantry and the carbon fibre Pit Stop Gantry are also painted by Andrew’s team. The Pit Wall Gantry is where some of the Team’s strategists sit, while the Pit Stop Gantry is the unit outside the garage, which houses the traffic lights for the Pit Stop as well as compressed air line hoses and the trigger wiring to operate the wheel guns.

Andrew explains, “All three of these are being built up and broken down each race weekend, so we have to ensure the coating is robust, because as they are always in use, it can be difficult for us to find time to refresh the coating during the season. We trust Spies Hecker to give us that confidence in a lasting, durable, good-looking finish.”

Modular, flexible and always looking perfect

Over the winter, the Paint Shop undertakes the mammoth job of painting six sets of aluminium sandwich panels - one set for the European races, and five for the fly-away races. These are used to create the garage walls, corridors, doors and partitions. As many as 600 panels, which can be as big as 2m x 1m, comprise a totally modular and ultimately flexible system that will fit each garage space on the season’s calendar perfectly.

The Paint Shop also paints a number of hospitality panels for the fly-away races. This is also a modular system that is built for the team, guests, sponsors, VIPs, drivers and their friends and families. The hospitality area comprises a boardroom, kitchens, as well as dining areas and breakout and relaxation spaces.

Making sure the colours match

The Paint Shop coats as many as 70 aluminium Monster-branded drinking bottles each season. Painting these is very time-consuming, as everything – the branding, the name, the key lines and the “claw” - is individually airbrushed on each bottle. In order to ensure a perfect colour match, Andrew’s team uses the latest Spies Hecker fully digital, wireless, cloud-based colour management system. The ColorDialog Phoenix spectrophotometer measures the sponsor’s original colour and links via WIFI with the Phoenix Cloud colour software, which is able to deliver an accurate colour formula. It also links with the IP mixing scale and IP printer.

Spies Hecker everywhere

The Paint Shop also ensures the Brackley site is always looking its best. Andrew and his team paint factory signage, and the hundreds of Lista cabinets that exist in nearly every department. But that’s not all. He says, “In the past we have even painted the large boardroom table in the Directors’ Suite, so we have to be ready for anything.”

With such a huge variety of items and substrates, Andrew needs an arsenal of comprehensive products with easy application to meet those challenges. The Paint Shop uses a variety of Spies Hecker products, including Priomat® Wash Primer 4075, then either Permasolid® HS Vario Primer Surfacer 5340, a high solids primer surfacer, or Permasolid® HS Performance Surfacer 5320, a fast drying 2K HS sanding surfacer. The Team’s colour gradients are painted with Permahyd Hi-TEC 480 Basecoat silver - called Stirling Silver – plus four additional silver tones, moving into black. They finish some pieces with Permasolid HS Race Clear 8700.

“The Paint Shop is such a busy department, we need a paint partner who is up to the task, and Spies Hecker has proven, year in, year out, that it is. We know no matter what we have to paint, there is the right product system available to us to ensure a perfect finish,” Andrew concludes.

For more information about Spies Hecker, please visit www.spieshecker.com and to follow  Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, visit www.mercedesamgF1.com.

About Spies Hecker

Spies Hecker, a global refinish coating brand from Axalta, develops optimum and practical paint system solutions that make bodyshop work easier and more efficient. Originally from Cologne, Germany, and with over 135 years of success behind it, Spies Hecker’s high-quality product systems, customised service and tailored training demonstrate its partnership with the refinish industry. The paint brand is one of the world’s leading vehicle refinish brands, and is available in over 75 countries worldwide.

Spies Hecker – simply closer!