200 Mile Per Hour Acrobatics: 1999 Mercedes-Benz CLR

After the BPR Global GT Series was taken over by the FIA and renamed the FIA GT Championship, many major car manufacturers gained interest in the quickly growing series and entered. This new championship picked up where the BPR Global GT Series left off. The series was composed of two classes: GT1 and GT2. The GT2 cars were primarily privateer teams with a lower budget and some manufacturers, but the real show was found in the ridiculously quick GT1 class.

The GT1 class was originally a place that various manufacturers could put their newest and fastest models in a international sports car competition. Starting with cars like the Ferrari F40 GTE and McLaren F1 GTR, the GT1 cars quickly gained popularity with fans and manufacturers alike as a way to show off their newest supercars.

Over the course of about two years, this class gained interest from various major manufacturers like Porsche, Mercedes, Panoz, and others. Starting with Porsche, the homologation rules in which there had to be a certain number of production cars built to be eligible for competition were exploited. The Porsche 911 GT1 was built first as a racecar and then just enough street-legal road cars were made to meet the requirements to compete. This meant that the development pace went through the roof and the cars were now more similar to prototypes than GT cars.

After seeing all of the manufacturer interest, Mercedes wanted to join the FIA GT Championship in 1997 with their own homologation special. To combat the new McLaren F1 GTR Longtail and the new Porsche 911 GT1, Mercedes built a new racecar called the CLK GTR to compete.

Mercedes developed the CLK GTR by purchasing a McLaren F1 GTR Longtail chassis and body and used it as a baseline for potential pace of the competiton. They would also use the body of the McLaren to test their aero parts before actually putting it on their car. This gave Mercedes a good platform to work off of and with their powerful 6.0 Liter V12 and their own car finished, they prepared an promising race car.

The CLK GTR was successful in its debut season and dominated the championship, winning seven of eleven races, with the other four victories going to BMW. With 1997 done and dusted, Mercedes decided to focus their efforts on the next year.

Hoping to defend its 1997 championship and more importantly, win the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, Mercedes made changes to the chassis and body, but most of the change came in the form of a different engine. The thirsty 6.0 Liter V12 was replaced by a naturally aspirated version of the M119 V8 engine which was used in the Sauber-Mercedes Group C cars throughout the 1980’s. Due to the required air restrictors used per regulations, the old V8 was easily able to make the same amount of power as the massive V12 and sustain better reliability and fuel economy at the same time.

The 1998 Mercedes CLK LM was even more of a success than its predecessor. It won all ten races of the FIA GT Championship that year with six 1-2 finishes and once again swept both the constructor’s and driver’s championships easily. Despite all this success in the championship, it was not able to win Le Mans despite clenching pole position due to reliability issues. The much slower, but reliable Porsche 911 GT1-98 took the victory that year. The result of the car’s utter dominance meant that there were almost no entries into the GT1 class of the FIA GT Championship the next year, leading to the complete removal of the class by the FIA.

Following the elimination of the GT1 class in the FIA GT Championship, the organization that is in charge of the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, called the ACO, created a new category for top level sports car racing. This new category was called LMGTP and was based on the previous GT1 regulations. However, the primary changes came in the form of reduced minimum weight, (by 90 pounds or 50 kilograms) and the homologation requirements were finally removed, allowing manufacturers to go all out in their efforts.

With the new regulations set, Mercedes chased after their first victory at Le Mans since the 1980’s. Mercedes flattened and shortened the wheelbase of their new competitor, making it perfect for the long straights of Le Mans. Along with the various body upgrades, the 5.0 Liter V8 from the CLK LM was bored out to 5.7 Liter and the new air restrictors allowed about 600 horsepower. The suspension and X-Trac sequential gearbox was carried over from the CLK LM to the new vehicle. Combine this with the new minimum weight of 2000 pounds, and the new car seemed very promising on paper but they had to put it to the test in arguably the greatest sports car race of all time.

Despite how promising the numbers looked, the CLR’s performance in practice and qualifying on the Le Sarthe Circuit was mediocre at best. Combine the average times with a disastrous accident in which Mark Webber, who is driving one of three cars, caught air and did multiple back-flips after pulling out of an Audi’s slipstream. The most logical assumption was that the sudden gust of air might have gone under the front overhang of the CLR, slingshotting it upwards, coupled with the rear wing, which produced immense downforce, throwing it into a somersault. Two CLR’s qualified in seventh and tenth. The third car managed fourth but was still over 1.5 seconds off the pole time, set by a Toyota GT-ONE. Following qualifying, Mercedes said that they would have the wrecked car ready in time for the race.

Following the disastrous practice and qualifying sessions, Mercedes hoped to redeem themselves in what really mattered, the race. During a warm-up session before the race, disaster struck again and Webber’s car flipped for a second time after cresting a hill. With the damage to the car irreparable and the race only a short time away, they were forced to retire the car, leaving only two to conquer the eight mile circuit.

Despite the atrocities in previous sessions, the CLR’s had a good start to the race and capitalised on a retirement by one of the Toyotas and made their way up to second and third places. Throughout the first four hours of the race, positions were swapped between the Mercedes’, Toyotas, and BMW’s due to varying pitstop times and strategies. Running well in third and catching a Toyota in second place, Peter Dumbreck piloted the CLR with great pace despite hitting a Porsche 911 GT2 earlier in the race. Eventually, he caught up with the Toyota and tucked into its slipstream. At speeds in excess of two hundred miles per hour, the last thing a driver wants is to be shot fifty feet upwards into a triple backflip. Unfortunately, Dumbreck had just that happen after he, blinded by the setting sun, clipped a curb. The slight lift in the front end caused a chain reaction which propelled the car upward, over a marshal post, and into the woods. The CLR managed to stick the landing and finished in the dirt on all four wheels. Dumbreck was knocked unconscious from the brutal impact and upon awakening he was given the breathalyzer due to Le Mans taking place on public roads.

This third horrific accident was enough to make Mercedes retire their third car, leaving Le Mans with nothing but a couple of destroyed cars and a crushed spirit. With the safety concerns following Le Mans and after seeing a strikingly similar accident take place the year before at Road Atlanta in a Porsche 911 GT1-98, Mercedes decided to end their CLR program completely and didn’t take part in any more races that year.

The Mercedes CLR was a promising project from Mercedes to extend their dominance another year. Unfortunately, due to the flawed aerodynamic design, the project spun out of control quite literally. Mercedes, left with three retirements from the most prestigious sports car race in the world and a machine that seemed to want to be an airplane, withdrew their car from the rest of the races planned for that year and left us with a not particularly attractive carbon-fiber pancake with one hell of a story behind it.