IWC Schaffhausen is proud to announce a new global partnership with the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team.
When IWC Schaffhausen and AMG, the performance brand of Mercedes-Benz, signed a long-term partnership agreement in 2004, their cooperation was founded on a shared commitment to pushing back the boundaries of mechanics and high technology. Both companies looked back on a long and fruitful history in precision engineering to the highest degree. Since then, they have consolidated their positions at the top of their respective industries and the partnership is set to move to a new level.
As an indication of the foundation the two companies have in common, IWC Schaffhausen and the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team are joining forces in a venture that confirms the Swiss watch manufacturer as the Official Engineering Partner of the team. The agreement becomes effective in January 2013, two months before the first race of the 2013 Formula One season in Melbourne, Australia. Shared passion, shared expertise Commenting on the role as Official Engineering Partner, Georges Kern, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen, explains: “The partnership with Mercedes AMG Petronas will enable us to share our passion for high-level engineering, our quest for ultimate perfection and our aim for top performance with a global audience. We look forward to being part of Formula One.”
Nick Fry, CEO of Mercedes AMG Petronas, mirrors Georges Kern's sentiments: “It is a privilege to find another company that espouses the same principles, with the same insistence on absolute perfection, as our own. We firmly believe that the partnership with IWC Schaffhausen will be enormously beneficial to us both.”
Mercedes AMG Petronas Team Principal Ross Brawn emphasizes the advances in engineering made by Formula One in the past few years: “It is widely recognized that motorsport serves as a testing ground for technologies that ultimately benefit us all. As the pinnacle of global motorsport, Formula One is at the forefront of such development, and that leading role is set to continue in the years ahead.”
Two brands: many features in common
Like the engineers at Mercedes AMG Petronas, IWC's designers, technicians and master watchmakers are relentless in their pursuit of a level of perfection referred to by both companies as “performance engineering”. IWC has a tradition stretching back many years of working with materials previously unknown in watchmaking, including titanium and ceramics. And the push towards miniaturization made necessary by Formula One calls for skills and ingenuity similar to the groundbreaking approaches adopted in IWC's first wristwatch-size Grande Complication.
As Georges Kern sums up the new partnership: “This is a win-win situation for everyone involved. Both our companies attach importance to craftsmanship and innovation and are driven by a pioneering spirit that underpins all we do.” This spirit is embodied by the designers, technicians and engineers behind the scenes, whose know-how and experience push technology forward at IWC Schaffhausen and Mercedes AMG Petronas. They are the unsung heroes who have the ideas and inspiration, build the prototypes and finally, put new technologies into action on the world stage.
Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team
The Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team competes in the FIA Formula One World Championship and is based at the team's Operations Centre in Reynard Park, Brackley, UK. Home to over 450 employees, the team is headed by multiple World-Championship winning Ross Brawn, and owned jointly by Daimler AG and Aabar Investments PJS. The engines for the team's Formula One cars are provided by Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, based in Brixworth, Northamptonshire, UK.
