THIS ENGINE GOES TO ELEVEN! The Story of Mercedes' 'Party Mode'
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
- In 2018, Lewis Hamilton made a passing comment about something he called 'party mode', which had the F1 media and the social media speculating that Mercedes had some sort of secret switch or extra engine programme that would unlock even more performance than they already had- Which would have meant another season of Mercedes' domination.
But really- It was a red herring. Party Mode wasn't some button or switch or secret thing, it was just the engine run at full qualifying chat. Something Mercedes had been using on the car when Rosberg was there.
So why the misconception? Is it because it was Hamilton and people make something out of nothing with him? Or was it all for clicks? Or both? Let's find out...
Enjoy! And remember to like and subscribe for more!
AFFILIATES:
F1 Store: f1.pxf.io/n19my9
Mick's Garage: www.micksgarag...
-----
Wikipedia images used under the following CC Licenses:
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
Flickr images used under the following CC Licenses:
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
creativecommon...
------
Business enquiries: amsimracing@gmail.com
Patreon: www.patreon.com/aidanmillward
Discord: / discord
Instagram: amillward67
Twitter: Aidan_Millward
Steam: AdmiralLaWind
----
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600 @3.7gHz
Motherboard: MSI B450 Mortar Micro ATX
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x 8gb @ 3000mHz
GPU: nVidia GeForce RTX 3060
Editing Software: Sony Vegas 14 Steam Edition
Wheel: Simucube 2 Pro - Cube Controls Formula Pro Rim/DIY Ascher D Shape Rim
Pedals: Heusinkveld Sprints
11:58 proper credit should be DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy Stock Photo
Are you going to do Adelaide 1994.
@ eventually.
Turns out the real party mode was the 1.4 billion dollars we spent along the way
2:27 in 40 years "in 2018 Cars had 1300 horsepower"
@@joribremer5260 its coming and we all know it is.
[Insert Richard Hammond Italian accent]
It's got a million horsepower yes!🤌🤌🤌
@@beany1987 then Ferrari somehow gained 50hp to overtake Mercedes by Montreal.
@@beany1987 Keep making as they call it head cannon.
As long as it involves Lewis, it fine to male up head cannon.
@@beany1987 wtf man, ICE = 850HP + Electric 160HP
Ok, this is the first time one of your videos made me feel old (and weirdly I feel slightly nostalgic for the 2017-2021 seasons already).
My Marshall 100W half stack wasn't allowed go past one. "Neighbourhood mode.".
2.5 is the sweet spot on mine. Used it to record and they complained it was too loud. And this was in a pro studio.
I’m thinking “you know what this is, right?”
Get a master volume knob mod. I had one put on the back of my plexi, so I can crank the preamp but use the volume at the back to prevent it shattering every window in a 1 mile radius 😂
My Laney 100w half stack has to stay just on 1. Not louder.
I’m pretty sure Mercedes had a quote “party mode” engine mode as far back as 2014. I remember Paddy Lowe stating Merc had an engine mode that would give them up to 0.8 seconds in performance. Which explains in 2014 in the wet qualifying, that Merc was up to 2 seconds quicker in Belgium than 3rd place Alonso.
yes mercedes has extra performance in reserve especially in the earlier years. However, lewis did NOT in fact change modes from q2 to q3 in austrailia.
Strat 2 it's called. Was used in 1 or 2 rounds in Q2 and both laps in Q3. Mercedes however had a higher/quicker wear on their engines than Honda had
@@joakimjeppsson1443 That higher wear is mostly because of the engine overheating very quickly on high power settings.
For some reason Mercedes hangs on to that "the body needs to wrap as tightly as possible around the engine" philosophy that doesn't make much sense to me. If your engine runs cooler, therefore lasts longer and can be used on higher power settings with a body that is fractionally less aerodynamic, to me that's a no-brainer: do it.
@@Bahamuttiamat Toto Wolff has admitted that at the start of the hybrid era they had dialed their engines down well over a hundred horsepower because they were afraid of being accused of cheating. And even then they still had something like a 100-150 horsepower advantage over the competition.
It's such a shame that Red Bull/Honda played political games to have the FIA ban the use of "party-mode" because they whined that "it was só unfair" because their Honda engine didn't have that power reserve. It's one of the reasons why I dislike Red Bull, the other being that arrogance they always display: if THEY complain about other teams, it's totally justified in their eyes. If other teams complain about them, they sneer that those teams should do better instead of complaining.
@@tjroelsma yes but thats not how you win when everyones pushing to the limit this is F1
Was at Australia 2018, on the little hill area right after turn 2. Lewis looked violent driving through there that day. Bottas tried to do the same thing, but ended up spinning and crashing right in front of us.
Also "This is Spinal Tap"''s IMDB page shows the rating out of 11 as opposed their regular out of 10
“Brabham Motorsport announces switch to Mercedes EQ+ Powertrains for the remainder of the VOR IndyCar Championship season”
@@julienaltena I keep telling you I need BMW
@@AidanMillward the same BMW engine the 1986 Benetton had, right?
@@AidanMillward How much claimed horsepower do you want in your BMW engine?
@@ianwhite2264 Yes
@@ianwhite2264 2200
To me one of the most memorable demonstrations of Mercedes Power was Brazil 2021. Lewis was just flying by everyone that whole weekend
They were even changing back to an older engine for quatar, so they had that engine for the final two races.
Toto said on german sky "dann kommt wieder die richtige Granate" ("then, the real grenade is coming back")
In Italy (roughly between 2014/2017) media outlets were always talking about "il bottone magico" (the magic button) a system supposedly used by Mercedes (and maybe Ferrari in 2017) to burn oil (ofc with the proper additives to make the engine run richer) for extra performance during quali. I think this started to get addressed halfway into 2017 with oil burning limits (0.9L per 100km)
And later, Ferrari mastered the fuel pump system, ECU and Engine power in 2019 season. That thing was a true beast!
@@pedroguedes278 Yeah apart from the fact that was against the rules and as soon as FIA told Ferrari to stop the Ferrari’s performance fell off a cliff.
@@teabagtowers3823 i mean same for the oil burning Mercedes, the difference is that their ban was more gradual so it was a lot less noticeable
@@podio_km4g532 Even then the Mercedes engine was simply a better engine so it didn't matter as much anyway. As soon as Ferrari fuel system tricks were banned the performance fell off a cliff. Because Mercedes and Honda were not doing those tricks as soon as Ferrari had that banned those two (Mercedes/Red Bull) just left the Ferrari's behind.
@@teabagtowers3823 pretty much
You could have mentioned the fact that Mercedes gave party mode to Lotus for the 2015 Belgian GP
Good to see ya in the IMSA chat yesterday big ups
The engine was, essentially, so far ahead that had they actually allowed it to be fully used, they'd have been BOPd, hard.
Toto has said this in an interview, I think maybe one of the HP ones. But he confirmed that they basically only themselves to use enough power to comfortably be clear of everyone else.
And when someone got close, they'd just unlock a little power.
@@Real28 this is what got Ferrari found out. They deployed the power in one go instead of feeding it in.
Imagine the costs of R&D for turning an engine which lasts a race weekend into one which will last ⅓ of a season. That's what I don't get about the "saves money" thing, because those R&D costs will be continuous to make the engines go faster and still don't go boom. 🤷🏻♀️
It's easier to make a fast engine reliable, than to make a reliable engine fast.
Looking forward to this one!! I remember sitting at the swimming pool section in Monaco and my eyes STREAMING in the final part of quali. Someone was burning something a bit fruity.
Oh believe me, it was also really expensive back then,but Tobacco Sponsorship Money brought in a lot of Bank for the teams. Making super powerful hybrid engines that also last a Long Time is way better of an engineering Challenge tho. I like it.
I'm not a fan of grid penalties for using more components. It's supposed to 'save costs', but in the nineties when I started regularly watching the sport the costs weren't huge by modern standards and the cars in those days had an engine every race
It's partly there to give F1 a greener image and reduce waste.
The costs weren’t huge by modern standards, but they were for the time.
Like seeing those old reruns of Bullseye on Challenge and they “only” win 300 quid. Would have gone a LOT further then than it would now.
@@AidanMillward I loved it when someone from Barnsley would win a speedboat
@ or Walsall. Given were the furthest from the sea
It’s not only to save costs, it’s also to drive efficiency and endurance in parts. Which flows down to the wider car industry. This is the part of Formula One. I think people forget, it’s not just a standalone racing championship. These manufacturers use some of this technology in the rest of the stuff that they produce. If you set a goal and a restriction for teams, it means they need to drive actual technological innovation to make that happen, innovation they otherwise may never have tried, and before you know it, other cars that you are more likely to come in contact with, including your own, and up with better engine life. Because the average person, can’t just switch it out every weekend.
You done any videos about AJ Foyt? I'd be interested in some Indycar stories
Id like to hear one on Alan Kulwicki.
Aiden's dulcet tones just smooth talk me while I'm working.
AND he always has found something new I haven't heard yet.
So, c'mon, do one about the Polish Victory Lap Nascar Driver, Aiden!
(Just joking, I like pretty much all your videos, been a long time fan. Do what excites you, man.)
And thanks for the vids anyhow.
Vettel would have probably won that Azerbaijan Grand Prix too had they just waited for Bottas to pit (which happened under SC) rather than just pitting for no reason 20 laps from the end. That said, he could have also ended up getting a puncture on the restart like Valtteri did. Also like what you did there on the oil burning saga, would love to get a sequel video on that not linked to the whole scandal in 2019, but to the early oil burning they used to do, when you could tell a Ferrari was coming out of the pits by the sheer amount of smoke coming from the fast lane.
I still say even ignoring party mode, Mercedes held engine modes to be used only by their works team. it explains Grosjean in Spa 2015. It explains why Lewis Had more engine issues in 2016 than any other Merc car.
Grosjean also probably thad the super-duper-ultra braking system that was later banned
Yeah this was a problem that really shafted the engine customers vs the works teams. Only the works teams had access to the full mode selection for their engines.
Thankfully this stupid loophole has been closed.
You get a like just for the “eleven” reference. Sometimes, you just need that extra kick to go one Louda.
Speaking of iRacing and hybrid power units. I'm so glad that my favourite cars, the Le Mans Hypercars and LMDh cars are ditching the simplified F1 hybrid system that's clearly designed for both simplicity and preventing exploitation. With a realistic hybrid system I'm expecting I'll have an edge for a while since I'm using the more realistic hybrid system already in Le Mans Ultimate.
Thanks for doing what you do Aidan.
Always a pleasure watching your videos.
Hard to believe the 787B was even faster 😉😝
Banned.
Very useful video for my sim racing nights 😈
So much fuss for something that was only worth about 15hp, if you'd listened to Christian Horner you'd be forgiven for thinking it was like having an extra cylinder.
U are aware that they had to tone down how much power it deployed over the length of a season. So that the FIA wouldn’t intervene and force changes. Some suggestions have that engine with a 100+ BHP advantage over the grid, but if they showed their true pace the FIA would’ve had to have made changes as they would’ve lapped the whole grid
@sammoore3687 There is absolutely no way it had a 100hp advantage over the rest of the field, that would have been worth about 4 seconds per lap.
Those conspiracy theories make no sense when you consider the fact that Ferrari actually were doing dodgy things with their engines and Mercedes were losing almost a second per lap to them on power circuits during 2019. If they had that sort of performance just hidden they would undoubtedly have used it at that point.
As Aidan pointed out himself in another video, Mercedes were always happy to let the narrative lie that it was all about their engines even though they had really good chassis as well. It's always beneficial to have your opposition chasing ghosts, but the claim that they were hiding pace just doesn't make sense.
Oh sweet! I've been looking forward to a video about this!!
Also using VRC would have been better.
In RSS, the deployment is linked to gear and speed.
Whereas in VRC it's properly setup to deploy dependant on where you are on the track, wastegate open / MGU-H on exit.
General usage - D rates etc.
Lewis put some qualifying masterclass in 2017 and 2018.
In the first 10 races in 2017 he had 3 grand slams, it was weird because at that time the Ferrari was still better.
Prime Lewis at work
Yea @@RANDOMZBOSSMAN1
You’re not allowed say that!!
@@gbarnewall1 lmao
@@RANDOMZBOSSMAN1 Yes
Have you thought of doing a video on Active Suspension? Im interested in it because i think it's reintroduction would do a lot for the racing, be very road relevant and could be done in a way so that no one team gains an advantage over another with a standardized system. Plus, with ground effects, it would be perfect. Ok not a perfect in the 2026 cars with Ground effects being made less powerful but still. Would've been a solution to the porposing.
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
10:05 There’s also an AMS Neve mixing desk where the monitor volume goes to 11 1/2. I’ll leave now.
Are you going to do Adelaide 1994
I know a lot of people shit on the regulations and the changes. And I understand it to a point. Especially from a nostalgic point of view. But one of the cool things about this sport is, the formula changes in the regulations, and the teams complete in arms race to perfect that technology, and it has all kinds of different Spinoff potentialities in the wider car industry. It’s innovation but it’s directed innovation which is also kind of cool. It’s kind of a micro version of a government saying to their businesses, this is what the country needs, go and do it, and whoever does it best most reliable most efficiently and cheapest will probably reap the rewards. But if it’s just every man for himself with no direction then it’s a lot more chaotic. Anyways, that’s my take. Goal setting is a good thing. You have 10 teams, this is the sandpit you have to play in, have at it. And they all come up with some pretty interesting shit which would have seemed inconceivable ages ago. That’s proper innovation.
To be fair, Raikkonen did worse than Bottas between 2017-18. So it was just 1 Ferrari driver vs 1 Merc driver for the title
awesome video
I suspect "turn it up to 11" was in use well before Spinal Tap, and the movie just made a joke with it.
What year was it when f1 cars had KERS
Back in the day I called it the Turbo Energy Recovery Device😂.
It was 2009-2013 that they had KERS. Not every car had it at the start, it was optional. No turbo was present.
In the early days of the hybrid era commentators called the MGU-K KERS. The last letter mening system and not device. They knew KERS from the previous reggs and called it the same way.
Interesting lookback and video in general.
But I don't need your criticism of the English language in between F1 info 😂
“When did Mercedes install a warp core in the car?”
Don't Forget the Adelaide Video Aidian
@@Asemota_003 it’s not been forgotten don’t worry!
@@AidanMillward good nice one
We all know Aidan operates in permanent party mode. 😉
Ooohh, Im really looking forward to this one
If the special mapping / setting used for Q3 banzai quali run is called Party Mode, then the Power Unit on the back of Hamilton’s car at the last 4 race of 2021 season is running Carnival Mode?
They simply ran the engine with a higher rev limit than usual to get more power out of it. It would wear the engine out more quickly but since they had two remaining engines for Hamilton at that point of the season, might as well run it to its wits' end and see what happens.
What’s funny is the sheer number of. “This favours Mercedes we should ban it to try and close things up” between 2018 and 2021 that ended up in redbull winning in 21…. Yet the fia say. No we shouldn’t do anything to slow redbull down in the current era…. The modern equivalent of Ferrari international assistance… I don’t consider f1 a sport anymore, it’s just an entertainment program
OF COURSE, IT'S A GOOD IDEA!
Who will be The new contender to steal Max Verstappen's Throne if Verstapped banned from swearing
could be lando charles or liam or kimi
Nice one!
I wouldn’t be surprised if party mode is now something that they would call bottle service.
Okay, this is a crazy question. I know they're currently limited to 4 PU a season. When you have an existing one you've used, can you send it back to the factory and essentially rebuilt/refresh the ICE components and STILL have it count as an engine you've used this season?
As i type this out, i suspect the obvious answer is obvious
Unfortunately no. Taken from an F1 article on this:
Each component of the power unit is 'sealed' by the FIA to ensure that it cannot be rebuilt or replaced, while exhaust elements are marked clearly, and gearboxes are also given unique identification and part numbers, and placed in special containers to be 'sealed' between events
As explained- can’t do that. But you are allowed to revert to an older engine if you need to.
@@krabkarton Appreciation that, i did not know about the sealed elements of the PU. Makes sense
The new porsche 911 carrera has a MGU-H
@@kadancomputers and noone cares
Engine mode 11. Boosting driver stats since 2014.
Has anyone noticed the graphics at 2:24 are wrong, they are the same as the ones at 14:43
@@JonathanLittlemore I have no clue what’s happened there.
@AidanMillward I was looking at the comments and I couldn't see anyone mentioning it so I thought I was going slightly mad! 😀
@@JonathanLittlemore Thing is- I watched the whole thing through before I exported it and it was all fine so unless I accidentally hit a hotkey that messed the placement of stuff up... I dunno.
Easily chopped out.
Hamilton was in party mode for five years...
Such a shame no-one explained it this way at the time. Nowadays the drivers are in controll over the hybrid deployment as advised by their race engineers. Engines are not remote controlled anymore by the pitwall. As long the drivers adjust the settings themselves, party-mode still exists.
They never were controlled from the pit wall. Two way telemetry had been banned for thirty years.
@AidanMillward
With a technical issue that threatens the engine it is still allowed to turn it down from the pitwall once after contemplation with the race stewards. This rule was instated in 2020 with the ban on engine performance influencing from the pitwall being banned. The driver regulates the power anyway with the throttle pedal so there is no way to ban 'party mode' regulated by the driver.
I was happy any time someone wiped that smug smile out Seb's face, even when Lewis was the one doing it... lol
@@Eagleracer38x Seb had the last laugh that weekend but 2017-2020 Lewis was on another level. Best car or not.
Savage Aidan goes savage…
Multimatic dampers also go to eleven
It’s like- one stiffer, innit.
I’ve always wondered, did Ferrari and Honda ever figure out what Mercedes did differently with their PU’s? Obviously that other provider never did.
Yh they had 2 years of a development head start. That’s what they did. They had information about the engine regulation changes 2 years before they was published to other teams
The split-turbo design and pre-chamber combustion. Honda now uses split-turbo whilst Ferrari is arguably the best at pre-chamber combustion technology.
Also it never hurts to start early and Mercedes started development early (and they had an incentive since their 2010-2012 years were a failure, so they could free up their baggage and focus on the upcoming regs).
@@sammoore3687 The finalised hybrid regs were released in 2011. Nobody "knew" before someone else. The discussions before 2011 were quite public and they were thrown into disarray following Toyota and BMW's departures from F1.
Mercedes just started development early because their V8+KERS cars were failures, so they had an incentive to forget about their current situation and focus on the upcoming regs
how is it mercedes party mode when every other team had these back in the day??
@@TYPOLOGY_ because the Mercedes one had more power, and people thought it was something it wasn’t when Lewis said they had it.
That's a really complicated way to say they cheated.
@@kitko33 but… they didn’t though.
Thankfully Sky hasn't taken the six nations. Sadly, TNT has. Sports are dead, and we killed them
It’s still shit.
Amazon lost the premier league because Sky and TNT realised I could watch Newcastle on Boxing Day for 8.99 a month.
BMW engines have always been very strong very powerful. Even the road cars
mercedes did do party mode taking it to 11, w-11 that is
Didn't Mercedes lose their Party Mode when restrictions in Maps came in ?
They still had it, the issue is that if they ran party mode in qualifying they’d have to use it in the race.
Which might explain Brazil 21. Lewis might have run the whole race in party mode.
@@AidanMillward cheers
F1 is a funny sport. People will cry and get your shit banned but complain when you do the same
Horner in 2015: change engine rules or we quit
Horner in 2022: just build a better car not my problem.
@ Literally 🤣
Ahhh strat mode 1
Still doesnt explain those puffs of blue smoke we saw out of the mercs for those years. What you are saying party mode was and what redbull were saying it was, are not the same thing.
That was the oil burning loophole they exploited. Ferrari was doing it too.
@ no, ferrari was tricking the fuel flow sensor in between 20mil sec reporting. Not the same thing.
@@pranc236 Ferrari was also having hot oil leak from the intercooler by design to then throw that hot oil in somewhere else and burn it for extra power. On top of the fuel pulse.
Difference was- Mercedes did it by design while Ferrari made it do that afterwards.
@ if merc did it like they said leakage past piston rings, we would have seen the blue smoke all the time and not when they needed more power. We never saw blue smoke from the ferrari. What you stated was one of the theories redbull had about the ferrari. Both cases teams were breaking the rules.
@@pranc236they were all also pumping the oil full of additives so those additives were reaching the combustion chamber and making more power/less smoke. It's pretty devious but it's not exactly rocket science. They say no additives in the fuel, you put the additives in the oil, people start getting suspicious that you're burning oil, you put additives in the oil to make it burn cleaner.
So.. 11 is one Lauda than 10?
I'll see myself out, thanks.
But but but the car
How many videos are there already and will be created trying to downplay the fact Hamilton had a dominant car from 2014 to 2020, therefore embellishing his performances to justify the diety figure he has among lame fans?
I'm looking forward to the video that shows how many times drivers benefitted from safety car intervention and favourable pit strategies.
If Hamilton's stats are boosted through having a dominant car then Max's stats for 2023 have been inflated more than the Bank of England's interest rates.
Oh wait, that was talent wasn't it? My mistake...
@@AidanMillward "inflated more than the Bank Of England''s interest rates" is another way to justify embellishing Hamilton.
Verstappen might've had a dominant car in 2023, but it's only been one season. Hamilton had 7 seasons of a dominant car, gained only due to regulation changes.
Knowledgable fans understand that drivers of sufficient quality are going to get their hands on the best car for 1-4 years in their career and fill their boots. Stats are recognised in context. There's a threshold with accumulated success where it doesn't matter how much more success a driver has, they're not better than other driver because of it.
Micro analysing Hamilton during this time as though he's some supernatural being isn't fooling a lot of fans.
I'm looking forward to the video that shows who benefitted most/least from pit strategies, safety car interventions and from the hu
ge runoff areas that enable them to carry on after making a mistake.
@ don’t hate the player hate the game. Got given the goods and delivered.
If it was a driver you liked this would not even be a problem.
@@AidanMillward Driver that I liked, like Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Mika Hakkinen?
If those guys filled their boots, then I'd go along with it. But, I wouldn't take the stats so seriously as to think they're better than Alain Prost.
The only positive for inflated stats would be that Hakkinen would cut down Schumacher's stats and they'd even out. Which would be more representative of their abilities.
Ae you going to do a video on drivers most/least benefitting from favourable pit strategies, safety car interventions and driving off track but benefitting from huge run offs? I'm sure you and Ted Kravtiz could get together and make an informative video.