Mercedes-AMG One vs Aston Martin Valkyrie: F1 Extremes Compared

Ear defenders: now we’re getting somewhere. Or perhaps not. Either way, the Valkyrie delivers the complete ‘F1 team principal on the pitwall’ experience with a set of purposeful motorsport headphones, mouthpiece and dangling cables included. The AMG One, meanwhile, offers the full ‘no, it’s honestly fine in here’ approach: discreet Sennheiser noise-cancelling in-ear buds, engraved with the owner’s name. Those details reveal plenty about both cars.

Above all, they reveal just how alarmingly loud they are. And they truly are. You may already have heard that the Valkyrie gives bystanders a pure, red-blooded V12 symphony while subjecting its occupants to a white-noise V12 shriek. Discovering that the AMG One is similarly punishing is more surprising.

Did Mercedes simply run out of time to resolve it? The One took six years to reach production after being unveiled as the Project One in September 2017. Or is the noise simply faithful to the car’s ethos? We are about to find out.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

Its development timeline was broadly comparable with that of the Valkyrie, which reached owners in 2022; the AMG followed a year later. Technology moved on, chief executives changed - current Mercedes boss Ola Källenius joked, “we were drunk when we said yes” when approving the One - yet both companies held their nerve. Neither pulled a Jaguar XJ220, promising one thing before supplying something else.

F1 technology in the AMG One and Aston Martin Valkyrie

These are road cars with genuine Formula 1 technology. Mercedes will not say precisely how much hardware travelled directly from the 2016 W06 racer into the One, but the powertrain’s fundamentals are undeniably shared: a 1.6-litre split-turbo V6, incorporating MGU-H and MGU-K - heat and kinetic motor generator unit - systems, plus two additional electric motors driving the front wheels.

The Valkyrie’s direct F1 connection may be a more intangible idea, but when its original thinker is arguably Formula 1’s most successful person ever, it demands attention. Especially when the result is arguably the most radical and distinctive road car ever created. What cannot be disputed is that no current hypercar, not even Ferrari’s F80 or the GMA T.50, can equal these two for direct F1 ancestry.

That shared heritage links and elevates them, but one central difference divides them. Picture the early development stages. Having briefed its F1 colleagues in Brixworth - presumably leaving them reeling - Mercedes takes its familiar route, figuring out how to accommodate those components alongside two substantial, 95th-percentile occupants. Those people are fixed requirements, so the packaging must work around them.

At much the same moment, Adrian Newey is occupied with the Valkyrie’s aerodynamics. That is the only immovable requirement; when it is complete, he assesses whatever room remains for humans. On seeing that two Smurfs could just about be squeezed in, he shrugs and carries on.

That absence of compromise, that relentless focus, is what makes the Valkyrie unique. Nothing remotely like it has existed before. The McLaren F1 was Gordon Murray demonstrating that he could apply himself to road cars; the Valkyrie is Adrian Newey taking the piss.

It is completely extreme. Nothing else resembles it, and probably nothing ever will. Not even the RB17, because it will not be road legal. It makes every other manufacturer seem sluggish, entrenched, afraid of progress and revolution. Most of all, they appear concerned about upsetting customers. Inevitably, the AMG One is the more restrained proposition. It brings 1990s Group C machinery to mind: wide, rounded and thoroughly clothed. It is striking, although remove the vertical fin and its form would not be especially extraordinary.

The Valkyrie looks absurd. Viewed from the rear, it seems to float, its central tub suspended between outriggers and its bodywork apparently vacuum-formed over the top. It is wasp-like and insectoid. Yet it cannot transform. Get the sequence of button presses correct, ensure fingers and small children are clear, and the AMG enters Strat2 mode. Think expanded lizard: the suspension lowers, wings appear and vents rise up. The complete porcupine.

Carbon tubs, rigid engines and extreme cabins

I have explained what distinguishes them; here is what unites them. Both cars have engines rigidly fixed to their carbon tubs. Almost nobody does that. Across the past 30 years, I can identify only one other example: Ferrari’s F50. Fine, add the Caparo T1 if rare-groove choices count, and the BAC Mono if lightweight cars qualify.

Why does this matter? Engine vibrations pass straight into the chassis, while the carbon acts as a speaker that amplifies them, leaving you needing ear defenders. The benefits are lower weight and increased stiffness. When suspension can mount directly to the drivetrain, there is no need for such a heavy rear subframe - or any rear subframe at all, in the Valkyrie’s case.

It may sound like a detail for geeks, but it is revealing. Mercedes persisted with a rigidly mounted engine despite knowing the inevitable shortcomings and restrictions, and that says as much about the One’s character and philosophy as its powertrain does. My concern had been that Mercedes would not be able to escape its own instincts: an F1 engine in a hypercar would be acceptable, but only if the rest of the package followed the three-pointed star’s brand values.

Instead, it looks relatively composed and sensible but behaves with far more rawness: a car of real compromises. You notice that from the outset. Getting inside is almost as difficult as entering the Valkyrie. The Aston is like potholing; the Mercedes resembles backing into a toilet cubicle. You must enter bottom first. Attempting it feet first leaves the awkwardly angled door demanding limbo flexibility. Lower yourself in, swing your legs round and you are aboard.

This is presumably where resistance to extremism began. The cabin is roomy, the windscreen wide and elbow space plentiful. Its seat has shallow sides and offers little support: access is easy, but there is no under-thigh support. Why, too, is the steering ‘wheel’ so enormous? Your thumbs cannot reach the DRS and neutral buttons, surely their entire purpose. Still, there are no haptics, and the Mercedes controls look good, feel high quality and work perfectly well. It is a considerably more complete interior than the Valkyrie’s.

The AMG’s message is therefore contradictory. Anyone familiar with its technical history will be less startled by what follows, but if all you have taken in is the smooth bodywork and difficult yet manageable entry, the start-up procedure is a considerable surprise.

The shock is not the 50–60 seconds required for the catalytic converters to preheat from cold. It is that, once they have, I have never encountered a car sounding so broken at idle. I genuinely thought the crankshaft had fractured and was enthusiastically reducing the engine internals to fragments. It is dreadful. Lewis Hamilton, it turns out, won F1 championships with something that brought construction-site noises to the pitlane.

Thruxton reveals the AMG One and Valkyrie differences

We are at Thruxton, everything a Tilke circuit is not: gritty, intimidating and terrifyingly fast, with no forgiving run-off. We came because this is the UK’s quickest track and we want to experience the downforce. An F1 car has visited, but only once. In 1993, Damon Hill used his Williams FW15C to set the all-time lap record of 57.6secs, averaging 147mph. Good grief. Honestly, if you have not been, come here for one of the track experiences; as you soil yourself through the endless right-hander after Noble, contemplate that lap time.

Rain is lashing down, and both cars sit on barely-there track tyres. Since neither Jethro nor I fancies sliding across Thruxton’s seemingly endless grass, we weigh them instead. With full tanks, the Valkyrie is 1,340kg and the One is 1,745kg. A 405kg gap is enormous, but context matters. The Valkyrie is simple: rear-wheel drive, dominated by its V12 and as bare as a prison cell. It is a wheeled self-flagellation chamber - except there is no space to swing the whip. Yes, the AMG uses a smaller engine, but it also has additions, especially its two front electric motors and substantially larger battery pack: 8.4kWh against 1.3.

The selection of noises inside is bizarre – there are whizzes, chuffs, hums and cheeps

Wherever you look, there is simply more Mercedes: more bodywork, trim, size, equipment and complexity. And less clarity of thought. The Aston feels like a car more faithfully following the one-component/two-jobs principle. My favourite example? The front numberplate mounting box also stores the medical kit. Or perhaps it is the Valkyrie’s Venturi, so vast that Ollie Kew and Jack Rix can climb inside until only their lower legs remain visible.

We begin exploratory laps. Jethro takes the Aston and I take the AMG. Looking over the One’s steering yoke while the Valkyrie heads out ahead, I imagine how brilliant it would be if these two performed demonstration laps at an F1 race. Heard without being seen, you would assume an old and a new F1 car were circulating together. And you would long for the old one.

Of every Formula 1 engine era available for a road-car installation, why choose this? It is the least charming, and the sound of these cars was criticised from their debut in 2014. They are fascinating - the most thermally efficient engines ever invented - and the hybrid One sits neatly alongside Mercedes’ current range. Then the Valkyrie howls past in its mission to revive 1990s F1, and everyone loses their minds.

Yet the AMG engine is never dull to use. Not for a second. The soundtrack inside is extraordinary: whirrs, chuffs, hums and cheeps accompany unfathomable but evidently significant powertrain decisions behind you. Press the accelerator and you feel the force, but precisely what occurs between those two points is anyone’s guess. It is unconventional, but hugely exciting as 574 internally combusted horsepower gets jiggy with another 489 from three electric motors. The 122bhp fourth motor only drives the turbo.

There is no lag. With four-wheel drive and devastating torque, the AMG tears chunks from the squirming, rear-drive Valkyrie out of each slow turn. There is no need to pursue the redline: allow the mid-range torque to land hard and force you into the seat. Given enough road, I reckon the AMG One possesses the broadest useful powerband of any car I can name. It is potent from 4,000, does its finest work around 8,000–9000rpm, then remains charged with energy at 11.

For outright acceleration, though, the Valkyrie wins. Compared with the AMG, it has the mass and frontal area of a paper dart; without even pressing the ERS button for its extra 160bhp e-Boost, it reaches 180mph on the approach to Club chicane. Air simply appears to meet it differently, the porous Valkyrie spearing through it as if it does not exist. It never seems governed by the same rules of gravity and motion as the AMG, nor does it feel like a car producing enormous downforce.

At speed, its steering does not become heavier and the suspension does not seem to compress - principally because it is not, as torsion bars and hydraulic actuators separate the loads applied from below, such as potholes and compressions, from those applied above by downforce. It darts about, its steering remains accurate and exact, and it is always light on its feet.

The AMG feels more conventional. You sense aerodynamic drag as acceleration begins to fade, and you can feel downforce through substantially heavier steering, even though the One also employs sophisticated inboard suspension to separate roll and lift movements. It is the more comforting machine in fast corners, fastening itself to a line and refusing to be pushed away. Tenacious, exceptionally stable and secure, it has brakes that inspire more confidence and better turn-in than the Aston.

It is the car I would rather attack Thruxton in. The immense steering wheel and loose seats do not appeal, but the powertrain yips, snarls and gnashes away while the low view takes in open vents steaming water vapour. The experience is all-consuming. It is more Le Mans than F1, admittedly, but unquestionably motorsport. My principal conclusion from this test is that the AMG One is a truly hardcore charger. It is neither going through the motions nor pretending to be something else; it simply relishes being hurled at corners.

Its single-clutch gearbox is gentler and smoother than the Valkyrie’s. Downshifts are sharper and more persuasive than upshifts. I did not bother with Comfort mode, but at maximum attack the suspension is firm, occasionally skipping and making clear that it is working hard. In Strat2 it gives everything; after a few laps the electrical energy is exhausted, but switch to Race+ and the speed at which it replenishes charge is remarkable. It is complex and absorbing from beginning to end.

The Valkyrie is harder to pin down. It flows wonderfully around Thruxton, absorbs kerbs impeccably and offers line choices where the One identifies only a single route. Yet it delivers less chassis and suspension feedback at high speed, making full commitment more difficult. Its brakes are soft beneath your foot, the pedal travels slightly too far, and it does not attack slow corners, even though it will readily oversteer under braking on entry.

No matter how they’re used, these two cars have kept their promise to road legalise F1 extremes

The AMG is the more evenly balanced car - its 50:50 weight distribution against the Aston’s 43:57 demonstrates that - as well as the more coherent and comprehensible one. I repeatedly climbed from the Valkyrie feeling disorientated, not only because of its banshee soundtrack but because its qualities conflict so dramatically: savage noise with placid suspension, light steering with wild acceleration. Serenity and ferocity. It has so many layers.

So does the AMG: the calm cabin and styling set against the brutality of its driving experience. The One impressed me enormously. I feared we would discover it to be unreliable and incomplete; that Mercedes, worn down by its lengthy development and relentless criticism, had pushed it out of the door before collapsing, exhausted and disenchanted by the entire undertaking.

From the outside, it certainly looks as if the company wants to forget the project. We have repeatedly tried to obtain a car from Mercedes, but this one comes from an exceptionally generous owner. And we will celebrate it, because what we found was neither unfinished nor fatally flawed. Across two days it did not miss a beat: not one warning light, not one refusal to enter or leave lizard mode. Beyond that, it is an intriguing and fascinating car.

God knows how you would use one. Track days, hopefully, like this owner does. George Russell’s application seems likelier: Monaco errands, car gatherings, coffee stops and days out - that is probably it. The same goes for the Valkyrie. However they are used, both have honoured their promise to make F1 extremes road legal. If I had the millions, I would choose the Aston for its looks, the feeling that it represents a unique moment in history, and its more effective ear defenders.