48 hours with AMG at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring
Mercedes-AMG celebrates 50 years and gives more details on Project ONE car
Twenty minutes and 30 seconds. That was the time of my lap around the Nürburgring ’s famed 20.8-kilometre Nordschleife circuit in a 603-horsepower Mercedes-AMG E63 sedan. That’s just a lifetime off the eight minutes, 15 seconds of the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG003 race car that took pole position for this past weekend’s running of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, which comprises the Nordschleife and the five-kilometre Grand Prix track. But hey, I was a rookie!
It was also a parade lap with a bunch of other AMG vehicles, both past and present. You know: Follow the car ahead. No passing. No weaving. A maximum of three lengths behind. Keep your windows closed, that sort of thing.
I don’t think the E63 touched 100 km/h. OK, it wasn’t a bucketlist drive, but I’ll take it.
Mercedes-Benz is celebrating 50 years of AMG, the once-small independent tuner and racing firm that became a whole lot bigger (1,600 employees) as the automaker’s performance and sports-car division. There are now some 50 models — from compact A-Class to the uber-ute G-Wagen — that wear the AMG badge. Last year, just under 100,000 performance-enhanced cars and SUVs were sold, including 6,723 in Canada at a “take rate” of 16.6 per cent.
It is also the 90th anniversary of the Nordschleife, also known as the Green Hell, thanks to Formula One world champion Jackie Stewart’s description of the forest-lined circuit. AMG’s history is intertwined with the track and the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, including a win in 2013 with the SLS AMG GT3 and last year’s podium sweep, courtesy of the AMG GT3. There’s also the real-world testing that goes on at the circuit.
“If you want to know whether something new really works, you have to test it to the limit,” says Tobias Moers, chairman of the board of Mercedes-AMG. “That’s exactly what we do here at the Green Hell, where we work on a permanent basis. This year we’ve booked 17 weeks at the Nürburgring. After all, this circuit demands everything from a car. And a car that is ‘Nordschleife approved’ bears the very best seal of quality in terms of driving dynamics.”
The weekend saw customerdriven AMG GT3 sports cars strive for a repeat win at the 24 Hours — alas, crossing the finish line first was an Audi R8 LMS — plus workshops that provided further insight into the future of AMG performance and an all-too-brief spin along the back roads surrounding the race track in a 2008 SL 65 AMG Black Series, the most potent — as in 670 horsepower — street car ever produced by the performance brand.
Moers touched on a number of topics, everything from a new generation of four-cylinder compact cars from AMG based on the upcoming A-Class, to technical innovations, notably alternative drivetrains such as the hybridpowered AMG GT Concept with a total system output exceeding 800 h.p.
“It’s the first taste of future performance engineered by AMG,” Moers says. “Extremely high power output paired with high efficiency.”
However, the biggest buzz came from further details revealed regarding Project ONE, Mercedes AMG’s answer to million-dollarplus hypercars, such as the Bugatti Chiron and Ferrari’s LaFerrari. The two-seat, all-wheel-drive, ultralightweight and hybrid hypercar will debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show this September, and enter production sometime in 2019. Moers and other members of the team weren’t completely forthcoming, instead releasing information one juicy tidbit at a time.
“We are the first to make purebred F1 technology roadworthy,” Moers said. “We are talking about a high-performance plug-in hybrid drive with one combustion engine and four electric motors (one for each front wheel, one bolted to the crankshaft, and one for the turbocharger). The engine is adapted one to one from our F1 high-performance works in Brixworth: a 1.6-litre V6, an 11,000-rpm engine speed and a high-tech turbocharger, driven by an 80-kilowatt electric motor.”
The four electric motors draw energy from an 800-volt battery cell that is also used in F1. AMG is aiming at an electric range of about 25 km in everyday driving. Total powertrain output is in excess of 1,000 h.p., which will be routed through a single-clutch eightspeed transmission.
“But if you want to know what gets me most excited as an engineering type, it’s that with our high-tech combustion engine we’ve reached a thermal efficiency of about 40 per cent.” Moers says. “That’s just sensational.”
Consider this: There were but 20 cars in grid formation for the weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, plus 33 cars lined up for the 101st running of the Indy 500. Even the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in just a few weeks, will field no more than 60.
By contrast, the ADAC 24h Rennen Nürburgring — or, in simpler English, the 24 Hours of Nürburgring race — had 156 race cars buzzing around the famed Nordschleife circuit in a frenzy matched only by the fervour of 200,000 crazed motorsport fans. In past years, as many as 220 cars have lined up in several staged starts.
Initially, the race resembled the world’s fastest rush hour as the speediest GT3-spec cars — Mercedes-AMG GT, Audi R8 LMS, BMW M6, Bentley Continental GT, Porsche 911 — zigged and zagged around the slower classes, of which there were many. In addition to the countless Porsches of various types and vintages, the eclectic field included high-end Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Aston Martins mixing it up with the more prosaic: at least one Ford Mustang, a Mini Cooper, VW Golfs, Renault Clios, Hyundai i30s and an ancient Opel Manta.
The disparate speeds of the classes resulted in a fair number of shunts over the 24 hours that thinned the field. Mechanical attrition also exacted a toll, as did driver brain fade.
Racing — never mind winning — on the Nordschleife has always demanded the most from race drivers. Dozens of corners, treacherous crests, steep inclines and gradients combined with often-challenging weather conditions — though, except for rain during the final 20 minutes, this year’s race was run in near-record heat — make for one wild ride.