Mercedes has moved to remove any doubt over its future in Formula 1, with an announcement of greater synergy between its team and sub-brand AMG.
The announcement, made by Daimler and Mercedes-Benz chairman Ola Källenius at a virtual investor conference, indicate AMG's links with the six-time F1 world champions will "intensify" next year.
Previously it had been speculated that Källenius would look to depart F1 as part of the company's measures to increase profitability, but instead the Swede has revealed a plan to shift Mercedes' focus away from the 'premium' market where it competes with the likes of Audi, BMW and Lexus to focus more on the 'luxury' sector occupied by brands like Rolls-Royce and Bentley, and sees the AMG-F1 relationship as an important part of that process.
"We will use the technology we have developed in Formula 1 for performance hybrids and other exciting technologies in the future and put that into our AMG cars," Kallenius said, highlighting Mercedes' use of F1 tech in its 'Project One' hypercar.
"With Project One we are taking a Formula 1 powertrain and putting it on the road, so it comes naturally to us to leverage Formula 1 even more for AMG going forward."
And while Källenius made it clear his company would look to "avoid non-core activities" as part of its restructure, he stressed that racing was in AMG's DNA.
“AMG was founded as a motorsports brand," he explained. "The founders of AMG – Aufrecht and Melcher, the ‘A’ and the ‘M’ in AMG, they only built the road cars to be able to finance their racing.
“This is very similar to the strategy of other racing legends or performance car brands whether they’re from Italy or in the UK in the past, the passion was about racing."
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