Stephen Edge of Mercedes F1
ASM World Class Speaker Series Virtual Event
Feb 2nd, 2022 (1:00pm EST)
Materials Engineering the Mercedes F1 Power-Unit
“The Devil’s in the Details”
Formula 1 is the ultimate team sport with the collaboration of over 1000 talented and driven individuals, being publically tested, on track, every other weekend.
In the world of Mercedes F1 Racing, High Performance Powertrains require a diverse range of teams to improve design aspects under tight deadlines to stay at the forefront of the competition. The Materials Engineering Team collaborates with a surprisingly wide array of departments, suppliers and engineers to help meet these deadlines and it’s this close collaboration that allows Mercedes to successfully utilise a wide variety of materials and processes on their power unit.
In this talk Stephen hopes to convey the fast-paced world (in more ways than one!) that the materials engineers at Mercedes High Performance Powertrain are exposed to on a daily basis. The time constraints and cutting edge research make for an exciting workplace combination that keeps the team always driving forward. As a materials engineer, his role of defining the correct materials and controlling the manufacturing processes are a key function for the team and he hopes to convey the high level of details required to successfully engineer a modern Formula 1 engine in the quest for “More Power”.
About The Speaker
Stephen Edge – Senior Materials Engineer at Mercedes High Performance Powertrains
Having started his career at an aluminium R & D laboratory 26 years ago Stephen is an experienced metallurgical and processing engineer with an MSc of Advanced Materials from Cranfield University.
Having experienced, both the technically advanced world of Aerospace and the fast paced development world of Automotive in his career, for the last 3 years the experience of both these environments have been combined to meet the challenges faced by the Materials Engineering Team at Mercedes High Performance Powertrains in Brixworth.
The last 3 years have entailed developing processes with engineers as well as characterising and introducing new materials to the powertrain and when the engineering goes wrong he has spent countless hours staring down microscopes at fracture surfaces for not just the powertrains of the championship winning Formula 1 and Formula E teams but also the Project 1 Hyper car.