They say that you should always put your money where your mouth is. And you can't expect to be successful at selling high-performance vehicles without proving how fast they can be. There are several ways of doing that, from establishing track records to going head to head with other manufacturers in dedicated racing series.
We all know how successful Mercedes-Benz has been in the past decade with its racing program, especially if you look at Formula 1. But a more tangible connection to the brand is provided via its involvement in the touring car series, and the latest result in the GT World Challenge Europe just goes to show how fast its cars are. Last weekend marked the fourth round of the series, which was held in the Netherlands.
After the first three events were held in Monza, Magny-Cours, and Paul Ricard, the series moved on to Zandvoort. While rounds 1 and 3 were organized as endurance races, the second and fourth events of the year provided a Sprint Cup format, with one hour-long races. While Porsche has dominated the endurance races, winning both of them so far, Mercedes-AMG Team Toksport WRT won the first Sprint Cup of the year, and their expectancies were high going into this round as well.
The line-up this year is pretty impressive, to say the least, and the Mercedes-AMG GT3 has to compete with cars like the Audi R8 LMS GT3, the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo, the Porsche 911 GT3 R and the Ferrari 488 GT3, to name just half of the field. In total, nine teams are campaigning the AMG GT3 race car! Saturday morning, on the 19th of June, Teams Toksport WRT and AKKA ASP secured third and fifth on the grid, the best results for the Mercedes-AMG GT3s.
Photo: Mercedes-AMG Motorsport/Daimler
By the end of the day, the #88 Mercedes-AMG GT3 of Team AKKA ASP would be the fastest Silver Arrow on the grid, with drivers Raffaele Marciello from Italy and Timur Boguslavskiy from Russia delivering a spectacular performance after 37 laps in total. But Mercedes-AMG Motorsport saw three more of their cars finishing in the Top 10, a performance unequaled by any other manufacturer on the grid.
After his podium finish on Saturday, Raffaele Marciello took things to the next level and set a lap time of 1:34.304, which was good enough to secure pole position for him going into the race. It looked like a sure win for the Mercedes-AMG GT3, as Marciello managed to build up a good lead ahead of the pack. After Boguslavskiy took over, he ran into some issues with the electronics and lost all chances of getting a podium.
Jules Gounon continued to do what he does best in the #89 Mercedes-AMG GT3, and with help coming from his teammate, Razvan Umbrarescu, he managed the best result of the day for Mercedes-AMG Motorsports, finishing in 6th, some 30 seconds behind the winner. Two more AMG GT3s also finished the race with good results, in 9th and 10th respectively.
The Pro-AM Class provided a winner with Dominik Baumann from Austria and Valentin Pierburg from Germany putting on a strong performance in the #20 Mercedes-AMG GT3. The teams will now be engaging in the 24 Hours of Spa test days before heading on to Round 5, which will develop at Misano, in Italy. With six more rounds to go, this is still anyone's race, but we will be following the series to see how things unfold.
The things Dragos enjoys the most in life are, in no particular order: cars, motorcycles, diecast cars, and drifting. He's seen (and driven) many vehicles since he started his writing career back in 2009, but his garage currently houses a 1991 Mazda RX-7 FC3S Turbo II and a 1999 Suzuki SV650-S. Full profile
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