F1: Pictures of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes F1 W05 2014 challenger

The new Mercedes F1 W05 car that Lewis Hamilton will race this year [Daimler - Mercedes-Benz] (Image: Archant)

Ahead of the first morning of official winter testing at the Circuito de Jerez in southern Spain, Nico Rosberg and Hertfordshire-born Hamilton took the wraps off the first all-new Silver Arrow to hit the track since 1954.

The Mercedes-Benz Power Unit, PU106A Hybrid [Daimler - Mercedes-Benz] (Image: Archant)

Designed from the ground up as an integrated project between the Mercedes-Benz teams based at Brackley and Brixworth, this new car marks an historic milestone in a landmark year when Mercedes-Benz celebrates 120 years of motorsport and the 80th anniversary of the Silver Arrows.

For the new season, Mercedes is the only top team on the grid with the advantage of continuity in its driver line-up.

Hamilton and Rosberg have spent the short winter break preparing for the year’s new challenges, working closely with their respective engineering teams and conducting intensive training programmes.

For 2014, they will carry new race numbers – 44 for Lewis, 6 for Nico – that will stay with them for their racing careers.

Hamilton said: “It has been exciting to see the car come together and to see – and hear – it run for the first time last Friday in Silverstone.

“It looks just fantastic, so aggressive but full of really nice details as well.

“I am excited to find out how the new Power Unit feels to drive, to hear how it sounds from the cockpit and to compare the job we have done relative to the competition.

“I think this is probably the season with the most unknowns that I have faced in my career and that’s just so exciting for all of us.”

Hamilton, the 2008 F1 world champion, added: “This is my second season with Mercedes and it now feels like I am a fully-fledged member of the team and that we are nurturing the great relationship we built last year.

“But it is still going to be a big learning year for all of us. There is so much new technology on these cars and so much information to take in and filter out to get down to what really matters, it’s going to be a big challenge with changes to driving style and race strategies, too.”

Since the end of the 2013 season, Hamilton has enjoyed a winter break with his family. But he added: “It has probably been the shortest winter I have ever had out of the car. I spent Christmas and New Year training in the mountains and I even put a turbo on my snowmobile, so that I could get used to the feel of a vehicle delivering power in that way, which was pretty awesome.

“And I’m excited to see the number 44 on my car again. It’s the number I had when I started racing go-karts – the number plate on my dad’s car had a 44 on it, which is where it came from – and I won my first British championship with it, so it has been the family number ever since. Fingers crossed it will bring us luck as it did back then.”

Mercedes colleague Rosberg will enter his fifth season as a Silver Arrows driver at the wheel of car number six.

“I am massively excited ahead of getting in the car properly, after our short shakedown at Silverstone last Friday,” said Rosberg.

“It’s been a really intense period and I am just so looking forward to driving the car.

“This year will be much more complex with all the new technologies and I think it’s great; it will help make the sport really contemporary.

“It’s all focused on being more fuel efficient and using Hybrid energy, which for me is a good route and something that will make the racing even more interesting.

The 2014 Formula One season marks the biggest change in regulations in the sport’s history and the Mercedes F1 W05 has been designed to meet the challenge of this technical revolution.

The initial engineering conversations between the teams at Brackley and Brixworth around both the regulations and potential solutions date back to late 2010.

Since mid-2011, when the rules for the new V6 Hybrid Power Unit were officially published, Mercedes-Benz has taken a fully integrated approach to every major performance decision with a clear-sighted focus on maximising overall car performance.

The result is the new F1 W05 and, at its heart, the PU106A Hybrid Power Unit, both designed to meet the challenge of a fundamental change in the philosophy of Formula One.

The introduction of a demanding maximum race fuel allowance of just 100 kg per race, coupled with a maximum fuel flow rate of 100 kg/hour, have focused the efforts of the sport’s engineers on delivering performance with a set of innovative new technologies that achieve an efficiency gain of more than 30 per cent.

The F1 W05 will, therefore, deliver over one third more performance from every unit of fuel consumed, a development story that places the new Hybrid Formula One at the cutting edge of automotive technology – and puts the sport on the same development path as the wider automotive industry.

The F1 W05 is the most complex Formula One car ever produced by the team at Brackley.

The Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) at the heart of the new Power Unit has been down-sized to a 1.6 litre V6 configuration and down-speeded to a maximum of 15,000rpm.

To achieve high power delivery and therefore efficiency from the ICE, a pressure charging system has been introduced, in the form of a single stage turbocharger and compressor.

The new Hybrid Energy Recovery System (ERS), which incorporates electric motors capable of recovering both kinetic and waste heat energy, presented a ten-fold greater challenge than its predecessor, KERS, which was pioneered by Mercedes-Benz in 2009.

This advanced Hybrid system is integral to car performance and marks a significant step forward in both system performance and durability.

Each driver is permitted to use just five Power Units per season without penalty.

The Power Unit has been designed for optimum installation in the F1 W05 chassis.

This new car is the product of an aggressive development philosophy targeted at optimising the packaging of new on-car systems, such as the increased cooling demands of the Power Unit, in order to give the team’s aerodynamic group maximum freedom to respond to a significantly different regulatory framework.

Compared to 2013, the regulations impose a narrower front wing; the removal of the lower rear wing and a reduction in size of the upper wing; and a central exhaust exit, thereby negating the effect of ‘exhaust blowing’ which powerfully contributed to performance in the past three seasons.

Every component has been reviewed and redesigned to get as close as possible to the challenging overall minimum weight limit of 691kg.

The result is an exceptionally tightly packaged vehicle which sets new standards in terms of overall integration.