We'll Say It Again: Racing Matters, Even if You Don't Know It

"Racing improves the breed." "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday." There was a time when these axioms indeed rang true throughout the car business, but the linkage between performance on racetracks and performance on the roads most of the global population is limited to driving on has become increasingly tenuous over the years.

- Angus Mackenzie

Case in point: Denny Hamlin's V-8-powered, rear-drive Toyota Camry NASCAR Cup Series racer, as just one example, has absolutely nothing in common with the Camry on sale at Toyota dealers around America.

You might think the technologies deployed in Formula 1-a racing series wherein the teams spend more than $100 million per year even in this cost-cap era in the pursuit of performance improvements measured in hundredths of a second-would be removed even further from the cars we all buy. But that is entirely wrong, says Adam Allsopp, director of the Advanced Technology division of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains (HPP). Allsopp's Advanced Technology operation has been feeding learnings from HPP's deep experience with high-performance F1-spec hybrid power units into the development of Mercedes-Benz electric cars and hybrids we'll begin to see on the road this year.

HPP powertrains have won 21 F1 world championships over the past 30 years, including seven drivers' titles for Lewis Hamilton and eight constructors' championships for the Mercedes-AMG F1 team. But how does that translate into building better road cars?