Mercedes-AMG GT3 2016 Review

Track Taste
Sydney Motorsport Park
Eastern Creek, NSW

A purebred racer, the AMG GT3 is based on the Mercedes-AMG GT road car and built to international GT3 regulations. Powered by a 6.2-litre naturally-aspirated V8 developed from the successful SLS AMG GT3 and a matched sequential six-speed racing transaxle, the GT3 features unique carbon-fibre body panels, aerodynamic aids and an aluminium space-frame chassis. Designed for maximum downforce and maximum performance, the GT3 is pure racer but, like its Mercedes-Benz road car ‘cousin’, also moves on safety technology with the latest carbon-fibre safety seat. Once a Mercedes...

GT3 seems to be the global racing category of choice when it comes to performance car brands. Indeed, with a host of brands still expected to join in, there’s already more marques in the burgeoning global formula than WRC, F1 and V8 Supercars put together.

The sports car aficionados are already there, but GT3 and the closely related GTE category is also starting to grab the attention of a wider community of automotive enthusiasts. Globally it seems to have the kind of momentum other categories can only dream of.

Locally, there’s a GT championship that is unashamedly aimed at what are coyly termed “gentleman racers”. Indeed, the entire rulebook of the Australian GT Championship is framed around stopping ‘elite’ racers and factory teams from dominating the class. At least for now…

Yet that doesn’t mean the series isn’t attracting world-class cutting-edge machinery. Quite the opposite.

Which is a very roundabout explanation of why I found myself sitting in the remarkably road-car-like and reasonably spacious cockpit of Peter Hackett’s three-month old AMG GT3 racer.

One of only 24 yet built, the million-dollar two-door's existence in the local series is proof positive of the health of GT3 racing here (as well as abroad). And the very fact that a racing novice like yours truly can be thrown the keys and let loose (in relative terms) speaks volumes for the user-friendliness of this type of race car.

Hackett’s car is one of two brand-new AMG GT3s already racing Down Under. Built by AMG’s Customer Sports division, the car comes with a nominal Euro 372,000 price tag. Add taxes (yes, including LCT), spares and any sort of specification upgrade (for endurance racing for instance) and you arrive at the seven-figure local number.

Our drive of the GT3 came at Sydney’s Eastern Creek at the end of a day in which Mercedes-Benz Australia gave us a sneak-peek at the new C 63 S AMG coupe. Any other day the 375kW super-coupe would have been the star attraction. Not once we spied the GT3, however.

And as the day progressed, with every glance at the shark-nose matt-painted racer and every additional detail delivered by Hackett, just a few more nerves crept in.

And then the time came to don the motoring.com.au ‘onesie’ and pull on a helmet…

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TRACK TIME
Hackett’s always good-humoured -- a demeanour honed from years of heading up Mercedes-Benz Australia’s driver training outfit -- but as I’m pulling on my helmet, he also makes it abundantly clear that any major off could end up creating a very, very big bill.

Further tempering any over-enthusiasm is my co-driver for the day, Stephen White. And finally, just to be sure, the GT3’s traction control and anti-lock braking settings are dialled up to just below ‘total numpty’ levels.

It’s systems like these that deliver a package more drivable across a range of talents and experience and indeed conditions. That doesn’t mean GT cars don’t need expertise to go quickly. These are proper racers built to lap around the clock and win races like the Bathurst 12-hour. They’re fast too, as evidenced by their lap times – at Phillip Island, for example, the GT lap record is almost five seconds faster than the V8 Supercars'.

At Sydney Motorsport Park’s pitlane there’s a touch of limbo required from yours truly but the first observation is... I fit! Not only in the seat, but getting through the door... Most professional racers are rather less, err… ample than I, but some ‘gentlemen racers’ aren’t. That and the fact GT3 cars are production-based means there’s a decent chance you’ll fit.

The AMG GT3 features a carbon safety seat that offers protection additional to the steel roll cage – it’s a Mercedes after all. If you were racing the car the team would create an individually moulded seat insert. For my all too short drive on the SMP layout, I made do with a generic base.

But it's comfortably reminiscent of my rally Renault RS’s seat, and save for the fact the GT3 is left-hand drive, the driving position is good too – a lot less laid-down sports car than I expected. There’s big roll cage bar work down the A-pillar but the sight lines are no worse than my Targa car and better than some other racers I’ve driven

A simple pneumatic system allows the pedals and steering wheel to move as one, to adjust to suit me. The seat doesn’t move. From memory, the Audi R8 LMS uses a similar set-up. I’m strapped in and comfortable.

The pedals are pedals and there are three of them. The heavy clutch is used only from a standstill and the car is set up for left-foot braking only.

The brake pedal itself is huge and there’s a pronounced guard on the left-hand side of it to prevent your foot slipping off -- probably a good thing given the pace and cornering Gs these things are capable of generating.

Of course, the steering wheel isn’t a wheel. ‘Yoke’ describes it better – your hands are at quarter to three. No choice. There are numerous buttons and dials but nowhere near the complexity of the cars we see Lewis and Nico fiddling with mid-corner. BANG!

Under the GT road car shaped binnacle, a combined digital tacho and gear indicator dominates your view. Most of the many buttons that are laid across yoke, dash and centre console, I don’t need to worry about – just Neutral and pitlane speed-limiter.

Shift paddles (left for the down change, right for up) are at your fingertips and work just like your typical road car set-up… Only they feel mechanically more precise and work instantly! The delay you perceive on most production cars (albeit very short in some) is resolutely absent.

Above the main screen on the dash there are shift lights that indicate the progression to redline. Showing me through the controls, Hackett’s co-driver for the Australian GT series, Dom Storey, tells me to keep an eye on them but to also make sure I rev the 6.2-litre atmo V8 out for the full experience.

There’s a flash of a smile as the young Kiwi racer says so…

He also points out the LEDs you’re unlikely to find on any road cars: ABS and locking lights. These flash blue to indicate the anti-lock braking system is working and indeed if the wheels are locking. The instructions I have are to stand on the brakes as hard as I like and get the lights flashing – it’s a minor challenge that I accept.

Standing on the brakes is not just an expression. The pedal pressures are much higher than in road cars as the ‘normal’ level of assistance is absent.

On some local sedan-based V8 racers there’s huge amounts of effort required (in part to ensure locking a wheel is harder – they have no anti-lock). On the AMG GT3 it’s nowhere near as taxing to the left leg – about the same as a gravel rally car, or akin to the ‘heavy’ pedal pressure some of us will remember from older unassisted road car systems.

I jump! Literally! All of a sudden there’s a voice in my ear. Co-driver Steve’s plugged into the intercom and says it’s time to hit the track.

Dom taps me on the shoulder, closes the door and it’s all quiet – until I hit the start button and all hell breaks loose.

Not really, but forget polite conversational tones. Steve has to speak loudly to be heard via the intercom – even in the pits.

Click first, some clutch slip, 20 per cent throttle and as we cross the release line of pit lane I turn the speed-limiter off, there’s a touch of wheel spin (maybe I had closer to 25 per cent...) and we’re on our way.

Throttle response is linear and the steering at ‘normal’ speeds solid but not heavy. There’s very clearly a much more direct connection to what’s going on at the contact patch of the front tyres, however.

There’s no way I’m going to pretend this is a proper test. I’m not fast enough and my turn behind the wheel was too short to even push to my comfort level. Hopefully that opportunity will come later this year -- I could tell you more but then I’d have to kill you. And racer-tester Luke Youlden and our editorial planning team would then kill me. Let’s just say: watch this space.

So quick impressions...

Steering response is telepathic and the straight-line pace of the car is deceptively rapid but not rabid.

The irony of the strict regulations that ensure racing is so close, across a disparate group of cars and manufacturers, is that most GT3 cars have less horsepower than their road-going counterparts. And with some exceptions (the Bentley comes to mind) the difference in racing weights are not that far from the roadies.

The GT3 is a case in point. AMG is coy about power but the consensus is that the 6.2 pumps out about 400kW – less than the Black Series SLS road car. One upside is engine life – AMG recommends around 20,000km between rebuilds. That’s more than six Bathurst 12-hours!

At full-throttle onto the SMP straight, the AMG GT3 is fast but not scary-fast like some supercars. What is very different is the cornering potential both in terms of braking, turn-in and entry-to-mid-corner grip and, of course, power-down corner-exit grip.

The big 18-inch slicks are responsible for part of the equation. AMG specifies Michelins but the Australian series uses a Pirelli control tyre.

And then there’s the aerodynamic effects of those huge wings, flat underbodies and clever front aero devices generating speed. In a real racing environment, with a real racer at the helm, Eastern Creek’s Turn One could be taken almost flat in the GT3!

In sixth!

At a speed in the high 200s! Don’t try than in any ‘normal’ road car.

I get to feel some G through Turn One on my first flying lap as White prompts me to clear the braking early, pointing out the slicks are already warm.

I'm careful to use the brakes rather than the gearbox to slow the car in the tight Turn Two, then Steve yells over the engine note and gearbox whine that grabbing second gear just at the tip-in for the second half of the corner will help pivot the car and accelerate the rate of turn.

It does just that, then easing the throttle on as I unload my left-foot braking, there’s a hint of a slide and it’s time to short shift for Three, wait for that apex and positively hammer the throttle and grab fourth gear over the tunnel hump before hard braking again (and there go the anti-lock LCDs) and tip it into Turn Four.

An earlier apex and the more cambered Turn Five generates better Gs and a giggle from yours truly as the car walks comfortably out of the corner and then the intercom goes dead. I use the opportunity to be a touch reckless into and through Turn Eight, Nine and 10, but it’s hard to ignore my coach’s hand signals – even in my peripheral vision.

Full-noise down the straight is very much that: FULL NOISE!!! And even though I’ve only brushed the brakes at the entry of Turn One it seems like I’m still going 50km/h too slow. There’s that much grip…

All too quickly the couple of laps are over. And I was only just starting to lean on the thing. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

If there’s one impression the GT3 leaves after such a short time in the cockpit it is simply that the gulf between fast road cars – even of the highest calibre – and race cars is ever widening. The AMG GT3 is in a different league.

And I want to race one…

YOUR TURN
And so will you if you get to drive an AMG GT3, which you can if you put down a million bucks… Conversely, if you’re a Mercedes-Benz Driving Events customer and have progressed through the various levels to complete what’s now called AMG Pro Level 3, you’re also in with a shot.

The $4500 day-long course is the new pinnacle of the outfit’s AMG-themed driver training courses that see drivers trained in C 63 Ss and AMG GT Ss. And if you reach an appropriate level of competence, the day is topped off with your own AMG GT3 driving experience. Not a hot-lap -- your own, almost-money-can’t-buy, time behind the wheel...

It’s a blast. And very probably money well spent.

What are you waiting for...