MOTORSPORT: Erebus needs to win in V8s, says AMG

The performance of Erebus Motorsport in the V8 Supercars Championship will have to improve before AMG agrees to renew its contract to run Mercedes-Benz E 63 AMG-bodied racers in Australia’s premier motorsport series.

That’s the message from the new chief executive of Mercedes-Benz’s factory tuning shop Tobias Moers, who takes over the job on October 1.

“It’s not really good where we are in that race series -- that is clear. There is no sense to talk with you ‘oh we are happy’ because no, we are not happy,” he told motoring.com.au.

“The aim is to win. If you race a car in race series you have to win. You have to believe that you sometime can win.

“There must be a breakthrough sooner or later -- that is clear.”

Moers’ AMG predecessor Ola Kallenius played a key role in the privateer team backed by Sydney real estate billionaire Betty Klimenko gaining a two-year Customer Sport contract to run E 63-bodied cars in the V8 Supercars Championship.

Kallenius overcame the strident objections of Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific to get the deal done with Klimenko, a long-term and passionate AMG and Mercedes-Benz buyer and fan, whose team successfully raced the AMG SLS GT3 before embarking on the V8 Supercars program.

As AMG’s product chief, Moers has been involved with the program from the start, is intimately familiar with it and is characterised as having less enthusiasm for it than Kallenius.

Nevertheless, Moers admitted that not all the fault for the inability to be competitive with the established teams lay with Erebus, which took over the former Ford factory team Stone Brothers Racing to enter the championship.

“We under-estimated everything in that series -- that is the truth,” he said candidly.

Klimenko has spent millions of dollars with AMG’s motorsport supplier HWA preparing the E 63s to the new Car of the Future regulations and a 5.0-litre version of AMG’s M156 multi-valve V8 engine for the championship.

But so far the three team cars driven by Tim Slade, Lee Holdsworth and German rookie Maro Engel have spent much of their time at the back of the grid, initially suffering from a horsepower deficit compared to the push-rod engines of the Holden and Ford teams.

“Then we changed the engine and everything so powertrain-wise the car is now capable,” Moers said.

But fuel economy has remained a bugbear for both Erebus and the new factory Nissan squad, which is why V8 Supercars controversially experimented with an E70 ethanol mix at the Winton 360 championship round in August.

It has now abandoned that process after much hue and cry from rival teams and mandated a minimum four stops for the opening endurance race of the season, this weekend’s Sandown 500. The Holdens and Fords would normally aim for two stops in the race.

An eight-stop minimum is tipped for the Bathurst 1000, while the Gold Coast 600 -- the third and final round of the two-driver-per-car Pirtek Enduro Cup -- will also cop a pit stop minimum to try and aid the competitiveness of the Nissans and Benzes.

But Moers argues that lifting the maximum compression ratio for the multi-valve engines rather than fuel mix or pit stops minimums is the rear solution.

“That problem (fuel economy) will affect everyone who comes into that racing series. I think sooner or later they have to change something with that. The 10:0:1 compression ratio has to be raised for the multi-valve engines because that is a two-valve compression ratio.

“That is one issue and they have to change something,” he said. “But it is always complicated if you step into a racing series which is pretty settled.

Volvo joins the championship in 2014 with S60s prepared by Garry Rogers Motorsport using a 5.0-litre version of the B8444S 4.4-litre V8 developed by Volvo’s motorsport partner Polestar.

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