The last month or so has been a whirlwind for Iron Lynx and Mercedes AMG Customer Racing.
From a Bahrain WEC meeting which effectively saw the relationship between Lamborghini and the Italian team that has serviced their Hypercar and GTP, GTE Pro and GTD Pro efforts finally founder, to just days later and confirmation that they would switch to the manufacturer most hungry to join the LM GT3 ranks, there has been a lot of work behind the scenes to get multi million Euro programmes firmly in place.
It’s quite the tale, and DSC spoke in the week of the confirmation of the deal to Head of Customer Racing at Mercedes AMG, Stefan Wendl:
“It’s an exciting time, exciting news, and I’m quite overwhelmed about the feedback we received already from motorsports enthusiasts all over the world, and from interested drivers too!”
Tell me a little bit about the process so far of the tie in with Iron Lynx. This has clearly happened in pretty quick time. How long have you been working on this, and what is the current commitment to the programme.
“We have respected Iron Lynx for a long time as a competitor on the grid, and always had good competition against them over the years. Here and there we met in the paddock and been in talks for a while, but actually in the past weeks, we heard more information on rumours we had read on the internet about things developing.
“And, to be honest, it was a really short time, not longer than 10 days (before the announcement) that we got contacted from Iron Lynx that they were interested in purchasing cars to become a customer racing team of Mercedes. AMG, and from this moment onwards, we checked our resources, we checked availability of cars and all those things which are necessary in the process, and if we could make this work.
“Finally though, only four days before the entries were announced, we met together with Iron Lynx and our board said we will take this challenge for all of us to make it happen and in a very, very short time we plan to make everything happen for the start of the season in Qatar and for the prologue.”
Is this more than a single year commitment with Iron Lynx?
“We have a commitment for the first two years to see where we are, and from from there, we see what we can do and how Iron Lynx will develop as a customer team, if they will stick with the ACO platforms, or if there will be more races on their minds.
“So, so far, we are focused on realizing the ACO invitation (to join the FIA WEC) and the potential for another race series on this platform (the ELMS, now confirmed too with a single Iron Lynx entered LMGT3 AMG). So this is our challenge together with Iron Lynx, and then we see over the year what we can develop together.”
When do we currently expect to see the new GT3 car?
“We are in the development process of the new car, still on the digital side, so we do not have finished our first test car, but we’re looking forward to proceeding. When that will finally be homologated on a track is something we will commit to a later point.
Back to the current programme with the existing car?
“The other part of the timeline for the 2025 FIA WEC and LMGT3 is homologation, and you’ve been very careful in the way you’ve worded that with the press release today. Can you tell me a little bit about the journey towards that?
“The wind tunnel test is one very important point on the bucket list of the ACO, to get the whole picture of the car, to get it in the right spot for their BOP measures, in the right performance window. But there are also some more things we have to proceed in the next couple of months to finish on the car, on the technical side, plus any potential changes after our wind tunnel test, where we are we be prepared for.”
Has the car tested with the torque sensors in any regard at all?
“We know we are late and probably the latest from all manufacturers, as we didn’t have the year in WEC this year. But we knew that this is also mandatory for the IMSA season next season.
“We have had several dyno tests done already to find-tune and to, optimize the software, and we’ve been already testing on our test area but also in Paul Ricard. And we have two more tests coming by December.”
AMG did not attend the IMSA sanctioned test at Daytona last month (the first for the GTD and GTD Pro cars fitted with torque sensors) – was there any particular reason for that?
“We decided to proceed in our test schedule, and this particular date didn’t fit in our initial test plan and how our resources could be built up with our tests, as I mentioned, on the dyno and on the track in Europe.
“We’ll test at Daytona in December.”
The LMGT3 programme also unlocks an additional opportunity for your customers competing in the Asian Le Mans Series with an automatic invitation to Le Mans on offer to the GT class Championship winning team?
“Yes, the customers, which are entered there, now have the chance to win an auto invitation and, for the first time now, to race there with Mercedes AMG.”
(Indeed after the opening race weekend at Sepang the #81 Winward Racing AMG leads the Championship!)
On Hypercar and GTP you know we have written about this – where do things currently stand?
“When we look at this championship and those exciting races and actually now with Iron Lynx and the WEC entry in LMGT3, we are happy to be closer to it and to be part of the event.
“So this is the first step for us, to get closer to the ACO and to their race series.
“In regards to LMDH, or LMH, there is really no news to present from our side at this point.
“We, as Mercedes AMG motorsport, at the moment, are totally focused on developing our GT3 successor car. This is one of our main topics, and to build up our new company, Affalterbach Racing GmbH.”
The new company will be responsible for all conceptual and technical customer sport activities of AMG, including the development of the new Mercedes‑AMG GT3 car. The roll-out of the new company comes alongside Mercedes AMG’s acquisition of part of its long-standing partner HWA AG.
“Those things are on the highest level of attention for us, next to keeping the business running and going with our customers through exciting times, until we we come, hopefully to a lean looking customer, racing business again.”
So a new partner team, in two new Championships, with a parallel development of a corporate framework designed to underpin and support a push forward for the future.
There’s a new and important new GT3 car on the horizon, and beyond that… well we’ll find out in due course!
