New livery for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport
Reigning FIA Formula One Constructors’ Champion, Mercedes-AMG Petronas, had new, more vibrant and exciting Petronas green to its cars for the 2019 season.
The responsibility to create the new green fell to Andrew Moody, Head of Paint and Graphics for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, at the team’s Paint Shop in Brackley, England.
A team from official team supplier Axalta, a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, and its global refinish brand Spies Hecker helped with the process.
“The green we had been using didn’t always have the same impact on TV as it did in real life. We wanted a Petronas green to pop from every camera angle, even from the roving helicopter shots at races, and look as good on a sunny day as it would in the rain. And of course we wanted the speed of application, reliability and durability we have come to know and to trust over the last five years from Permahyd Hi-TEC 480 Basecoat,” Moody says.
The final colour was chosen from an original pool of nearly 30 samples, as it met the brief to look great on the track and on screen.
For the 2019 livery’s striking colour gradients there’s the main Permahyd Hi-TEC 480 Basecoat silver – called Stirling Silver – plus four additional silver tones, graded one to four, moving into black. Stirling Silver also coats the cars’ halo for the first time.
The new green, whose formula is highly confidential and not commercially available, features in a bold glow line. Two concentrations of the Petronas green sandwich a bright, white-centred glow line that runs the entire length of the car, starting on the front wing, and ending on the rear wing.
None of the colours on the car are commercially available.
In addition to Permahyd Hi-TEC Basecoat 480, 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.
