Listen To Mercedes Start Up New F1 Car For The First Time

The opportunity to drive a Formula 1 car will remain out of reach for most of us, but when the Mercedes-AMG One hypercar arrives, those customers will get as close to the real thing as is legally possible on the street. The One is slated for first deliveries in the third quarter of this year according to the latest reports.

But before that, Mercedes-AMG will reveal its all-new F1 car, the W12. To get us excited about this machine ahead of its unveiling on March 2, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team shared a video of the W12 being fired up for the first time, giving us access to its intoxicating roar.

As usual, the colorful comments on social media on the W12’s engine sound ranged from “sounds terrible” to “make it a song!” We’ll let you decide for yourself, but the new engine is not short on volume, that’s for sure. The W12 will be revealed ahead of the first race of the new season, the Bahrain Grand Prix, which will take place on March 28.

Hywel Thomas, Managing Director for Mercedes-AMG High-Performance Powertrains, recently said: “We have got some issues. We know we’ve got issues, but we’ve got plenty of plans in place to fix all those issues and I’m sure we’ll be ready for the first race.”

Away from the race track, the AMG One’s 1.6-liter V6 hybrid powertrain is pretty much the closest thing Mercedes will offer to a full-on F1 engine. Using four electric motors, the One will produce over 1,000 horsepower. Mercedes has already tested the AMG One extensively on track, which is when we got to hear its V6 shriek in all its glory.

Where hypercars were once defined by their large-capacity V12 engines, times have changed and the AMG One is a great example of that. This same reduction in cylinder count is happening in the cars that most of us can actually afford, too; for instance, the new Mercedes-Benz C-Class will only use four-cylinder engines. In under two weeks, we’ll finally get to set eyes on both the new C-Class and the W12 F1 car.