Formula 1 cars aren’t street-legal for obvious reasons—they don’t have a huge amount of ground clearance, nor do they have proper suspensions, nor do they have lights. And, well, saying that F1 engines are loud would be an understatement. They’re, therefore, not allowed on the streets. But that hasn’t stopped car manufacturers from building a road-legal car that resembles the specifications of an F1 car.

For the first time since 1997, the closest a car manufacturer has come to street-legally replicating F1 beasts has been now. And who did it? Mercedes-AMG. And former Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas got a special delivery of that car. Even after parting ways with the German team in 2022, it looks like the Alfa Romeo driver has held on to his Mercedes past. 

Valtteri Bottas gets his hands on Mercedes’ almost-F1 car

In 1995, Ferrari became the first company to produce a street-legal car that came close to an actual F1 car. Produced until 1997, the Ferrari F50 is powered by a 4.7 liter naturally aspirated V12 engine developed from the 1990 Ferrari 641 F1 car’s 3.5 liter V12 engine. In the two years it was manufactured, Ferrari built 349 of them, of which 302 were painted in Ferrari’s iconic Rosso Corsa red. Since that car, no other manufacturer has successfully made one inspired by an F1 car. Until 2022.

In 2022, Mercedes-AMG produced the Mercedes-AMG ONE which is worth $2,750,000 approx. This hybrid supercar incorporates the 1.6 liter turbocharged V6 engine that was one of the primary reasons for Mercedes F1’s dominance in the turbo-hybrid era. The first one that rolled out in January 2023 was a black-painted one with a few blue touches and multiple Mercedes logos (like its F1 car in 2019) on the doors and rear fenders. The project to produce this car was launched in 2017 when Valtteri was in Mercedes. And since then, he’s kept tabs on the car’s development, wanting to get his hands on one. And now, he finally does.

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On Monday, Bottas received one of the 275 ONEs that Mercedes will manufacture. And it had Bottas’ touch on it. Straying away from its traditional black and gray colors, the German company made a unique model just for the Finn in his favorite color—blue! Needless to say, Bottas was visibly thrilled to get his hands on the supercar and took to Instagram to announce its arrival. He captioned his post, “Worth the wait 🚙,” referring to the five years it took to conceptualize, manufacture, and deliver the car.

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While Bottas’ ONE’s color might not be what Mercedes is used to traditionally, the blue sure is Bottas’ tradition.

Valtteri Bottas and his love for blue

If there’s one thing about Valtteri Bottas that hasn’t changed since he joined F1 in 2013, it’s his love for the color blue. The Finn partnered with Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes from 2017 to 2021. In their 2021 car, Mercedes added a strip of color to both its drivers’ black halos. While Hamilton’s strip was purple, guess what color Bottas’ was? You guessed it! Blue. He loves the color so much that in his last race for the Brackley team, his overalls were blue instead of the black he had to wear throughout the season.

Outside of F1, he loves cycling too. His helmet, riding gear, and his bike are all blue. In his free time, he loves driving around in his Ferrari F8. What color is that? Blue. Alfa Romeo released a bucket hat as part of the Finn’s merchandise. That’s blue too. It’s evident that Valtteri loves blue more than anything. And now that he has another supercar in his favorite color, maybe Monegasques will get a glimpse of it during F1 breaks.

What do you think about the Mercedes-AMG ONE? Do you like the blue or the traditional one more?

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