W17 Teardown

An interactive, annotated 3D teardown of the Mercedes-AMG F1 W17 E PERFORMANCE, the team's 2026 car. One page, no start screen: it loads straight into the model.

Zoom in and the annotation density increases. Pulled back you see major assemblies. Push in and subsystems appear, then individual components, then fasteners, sensors and valves. 179 parts are annotated, each with its own specification table, written explanation and a tag saying where the information came from.

Running it

node server.js

Then open http://localhost:3002.

ES modules need a real HTTP origin, so opening index.html directly from the file system will not work. The server is Node built-ins only, no packages.

To view it on your phone or another device, pair it with a quick tunnel the same way the other projects in this folder do:

cloudflared.exe tunnel --url http://localhost:3002

Controls

Action	How
Orbit	Drag
Zoom	Scroll or pinch
Pan	Right-drag or two-finger drag
Select a part	Click it on the car, or click its marker
Find a part	/ then type, matches names, specs and body text
Part browser	B
Cutaway	C, ghosts the bodywork to expose the power unit
Active aero	X, swings the wings between corner and straight mode
Reset view	R

Clicking a marker flies the camera to that part. Clicking the car itself selects without moving, so you can inspect an area without losing your framing.

The Explode slider pulls the whole car apart along radial lines. Markers follow their parts as it opens.

Performance

Quality is picked from the device on load: phones and machines reporting four or fewer cores start on low, which drops shadows, area lights, clearcoat shaders and texture sizes. The render loop then measures frame rate once a second and scales render resolution between 1.0 and 0.55 before giving up anything else, because resolution is the cheapest thing to lose and the easiest to give back. Frame rate and tier are shown bottom right.

Power unit internals are not drawn at all until cutaway is on. They sit inside opaque bodywork, so hiding them keeps 107 of the 442 meshes out of the render and shadow passes for no visible difference.

A quality choice is remembered per browser, so if you set one on your phone it sticks.

Where the information comes from

Every part panel carries a coloured provenance tag. This is the point of the project: a specification figure and a piece of general background are not the same kind of claim, and the interface never lets them look the same.

Tag	Meaning
SPEC	Published by Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS in the W17 technical specification
REG	From the 2026 FIA technical regulations, via FIA and Formula 1 explainers
SUPP	Published by the named supplier: Brembo, Pirelli, OZ, Carbone Industries, PETRONAS
ANLY	From published technical analysis of this specific car after its reveal
GEN	Established Formula 1 engineering practice, not a claim about this car

Current distribution: 26 SPEC, 11 REG, 7 SUPP, 20 ANLY, 115 GEN.

Most fastener-level and ancillary parts are GEN, because nobody publishes the specification of a Mercedes flap adjuster screw. Those entries describe what the component does and why it exists, and are labelled so you know they are not sourced to the W17 in particular.

What is accurate, and what is a reconstruction

Accurate and sourced. All principal dimensions, the power unit architecture and figures, brake and tyre specifications, materials, suppliers, the 2026 regulation changes, and the parts list. The validator checks the built geometry against the published numbers on every run:

overall length  5.498 m   [under 5505 mm]
overall width   1.900 m   [1900 mm]
overall height  0.950 m   [max 970 mm]
wheelbase       3.400 m   [3400 mm]
front tyre      705 mm diameter, 280 mm tread
rear tyre       710 mm diameter, 375 mm tread
brake discs     330 mm front, 280 mm rear, 34 mm thick

Livery. Black base with a silver nose, Petronas turquoise accents and the striped panel across the sidepod tops, matching the car shown on 22 January. Car 12 for Kimi Antonelli. All lettering, numerals, stripes and the carbon weave are drawn to a canvas at load time, so the project still ships with no binary assets.

A reconstruction. The surface shapes are built procedurally from regulation dimensions, published photography and published technical analysis. This is not a scan, and it is not the team's CAD. Sidepod curvature, wing element camber and bodywork blending are informed reconstructions, not measured surfaces. Anything in the dimension table marked EST is a modelling choice rather than a claim about the real car.

No part in the model is given a name it does not have.

Checks

node tools/validate.mjs     # geometry, dimensions, annotation coverage
node tools/smoke-ui.mjs     # interface wiring against a DOM stub

validate.mjs confirms the model builds, matches the published dimensions, sits on the ground, stays inside the width limit, has no degenerate or NaN geometry, and that every mesh has an annotation and every annotation has geometry. smoke-ui.mjs builds the interface against a stub DOM, renders all 179 panels looking for anything undefined, and walks the camera from a whole-car view down to a single screw to confirm the detail tiers behave.

Both need node_modules/three, which holds a single downloaded copy of three.js for headless use. The browser loads three.js from a CDN and does not need it.

Layout

index.html              page shell
style.css               interface
server.js               static server, Node built-ins only
src/
  main.js               entry point, picking, cutaway, explode, render loop
  lib/
    geom.js             lofting, NACA aerofoil sections, plates
    materials.js        procedural carbon weave, drilled disc, tyre textures
  viewer/
    scene.js            renderer, lighting, environment, camera flight
    hotspots.js         projected markers, detail tiers, declutter, occlusion
    ui.js               panel, browser, search, controls
  cars/
    w17/
      dims.js           dimension table, the single source of truth
      build-chassis.js  survival cell, nose, cockpit, halo, bodywork, floor
      build-aero.js     front wing, rear wing, active elements
      build-running.js  suspension, uprights, wheels, tyres, brakes
      build-power.js    V6, turbo, MGU-K, energy store, cooling, gearbox
      parts-body.js     annotations, chassis and aero
      parts-mech.js     annotations, mechanical and power unit
      parts-extra.js    annotations, 2026 front wing and livery
      livery.js         colours, procedural number and stripe textures
      parts.js          merges the above, car metadata, provenance legend
      model.js          runs the builders, collects meshes and anchors
tools/
  validate.mjs
  smoke-ui.mjs

Adding another car

The viewer knows nothing about the W17 specifically. To add a car, create src/cars/<id>/ with the same five pieces: a dims.js, one or more build modules, a parts database, and a model.js exporting a build function that returns { root, meshes, anchors, radii, movables, materials, dims }. Then point src/main.js at it.

The geometry helpers in src/lib/geom.js are car-agnostic. loft() skins a series of cross-sections into bodywork and wingElement() builds a wing from spanwise stations, which between them cover most of a modern single-seater.

Sources

• Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1, W17 2026 technical specification
• Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1, power unit regulation changes
• Formula 1, 2026 aerodynamic regulations explained
• Red Bull Racing, guide to the 2026 technical regulations
• Brembo, how the 2026 rules change F1 braking
• The Race, Gary Anderson's technical verdict on the W17
• PlanetF1, W17 shakedown technical analysis
• Pirelli, 2026 F1 tyre range
• Wikipedia, Mercedes W17

Unofficial and not affiliated with Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team.