2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 First Drive

Like most people, we don't have a half-million dollars to spend on anything, let alone a car you can't use on the highway. But if we did, it would now all belong to Mercedes-Benz and we would be figuring out a way to raise enough sponsorship money to pay for a season of FIA GT racing in the 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS GT3.

As others who have had the misfortune to share track space with Mercedes over the years have found out, when the three-pointed star goes racing, it does not do so casually. This GT3 version of the Mercedes-Benz SLS is yet another example of this approach. As part of its development, the car entered a 4-hour endurance race on the fearsome Nürburgring Nordschleife and qualified 3rd in a pack of 206 cars. Unfortunately it crashed in the second corner, but it was going for the lead.

Mercedes-Benz doesn't fool around when it goes racing.

Licensed To Speed
We met up with the very same 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 a few days after the Nordschleife enduro at the Hockenheim circuit, where the Grand Prix of Germany is held for Formula 1 cars. As we entered the paddock, we could hear the unmuffled 6.2-liter V8 of the SLS GT3 rattling the windows in the luxury suites above pit lane as Bernd Schneider, the five-time driving champion of the German Touring Car (DTM) series, warmed up the car.

Of the large group assembled to see this car up close after its debut at the 2010 New York Auto Show, only six would be allowed to drive by virtue of their FIA international competition licences. Mercifully we were one of them.

Like all GT3 cars, the 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 has been built to a very stringent set of rules designed to keep costs down and make the racing as close as possible. The body shell has to be just like that of the standard car, while the engine can be modified only externally in areas such as exhaust and oil supply. The suspension configuration must be as in the standard car and you can forget about carbon-ceramic brakes or wheels larger in diameter than 18 inches.

Creative Engineering
Yet the rules can't stop the SLS GT3 from being as different from the standard SLS as a standard SLS is different from an SLK. For a start, carbon-fiber body panels replace all the aluminum bodywork except the doors and the roof, while the glass of the cabin has been tossed aside in favor of strong, lightweight polycarbonate. A full aerodynamics package has been applied, including a front aero splitter, small DTM-style winglets on the front fenders, rocker sill extensions and a vast carbon-fiber wing complemented by an aero diffuser. All together, the changes help produce huge downforce for a street-style car — 573 pounds at 125 mph.

This car might hail from Stuttgart, but there is Detroit thunder in its V8 voice.

It's also interesting to note that the standard car's dual-clutch automated manual transmission has been replaced by a racing-specification, Hewland-built single-clutch automated manual transmission, an item that not only affords more durable gears and lots of alternatives for gear ratios, but also weighs 88 pounds less than the dual-clutch unit.

At this point, you'd expect the rest of the car to resemble almost any modified street car with the usual double-adjustable dampers, stiffer springs and adjustable antiroll bars, not to mention the biggest Brembo brakes that can fit within the 18-inch wheels. But since this is Mercedes AMG, this car envelops the driver in a carbon-fiber safety cell, something quite distinct from the usual rollover cage mandated by the GT3 rules.

Unlike most racing cars, the SLS GT3's driving position will adapt to a wide range of sizes, which makes it perfect for endurance racing. Not only does the car feature a tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel but also the pedal box slides fore and aft. Meanwhile the simple digital instrumentation has a bar of LED lights that go from green to red when the engine redline is reached and it's time to shift. Buttons on the steering wheel let you scroll through the information screens provided by the onboard telemetry system. (There's also a button for flashing the car's headlights at cars you're about to lap, which we're guessing is going to be used quite a lot.)

Here We Go
Schneider leans in to talk us through the controls, but there's very little to say. There's a clutch pedal, but you only use it in the pits; the rest of the time you just tug the relevant shift paddle, keeping flat on the gas on upshifts. Everything else is like a street car.

Except, of course, the noise. This car might hail from Stuttgart, but there is Detroit thunder in its V8 voice. Because it has to run through an FIA air restrictor, this 6.2-liter V8 probably develops slightly less power than the street engine — around 550 horsepower instead of 563 hp — but it's sitting in a car that weighs 2,976 pounds, about 600 pounds lighter than the road-going SLS.

The tire warmers come off and a hiss of escaping air lets the car descend on its integral jacking system. We tug the right-hand shift lever, lift the heavy-effort clutch pedal to its surprisingly gentle engagement point and rumble out onto the track.

For a few laps we have fun following an SLS driven by Schneider's colleague Thomas Jaeger, feeling the brutish punch of the V8 on the straightaways, savoring the massive bite of the racing brakes and getting used to the lateral force that the SLS can generate with its racing suspension and slick Michelin tires. This engine has so much torque that even slick tires won't cope with all of it at once in the lower gears.

And then we're back in the pits. Schneider asks us for feedback that we are at a loss to provide. We've driven the car insofar as we've pointed and squirted it, but we don't feel we've really driven it.

"OK, you can have another couple of laps," Schneider says.

And Now for the Fun Part
This time it is different, and we mean completely different. When Jaeger leaves the pit lane, he takes off. In an instant we have to use every rpm and every ounce of available mechanical grip to keep up. It's a bit of a fight at first as the SLS wants to push wide of the corner on the way into an apex and throw its tail wide on the way out, but soon these big slicks hit their operational window and suddenly this big, intimidating brute is flying around the track.

We're not sure what happened to Schneider's two laps more because Jaeger is in no mood to come into the pits again, nor is this SLS. Like all well-sorted modern racecars, it has that disconcerting ability to feel easier to drive the faster you go. Once the rubber and brakes are up to temperature and those big wings are really working, you can drive the 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS GT3 with a degree of precision you'd never imagine.

The SLS is brilliant across the curbs, so you can really throw it into the apex and then let it drift to the exit without worrying about it being thrown off line. Meanwhile there's enough traction to cannon out of the curves almost as if the engine were behind you instead of in front. You soon learn to be a gear higher than at first seems natural; the motor has the torque to do it, there's less chance of destabilizing the car, the amount of shifting is reduced and the tires last longer.

The SLS GT3's only shortcoming might be seen by many as a virtue. By the standards of purebred racing cars, the SLS GT3 is still quite heavy and it has its mass located at the front and the back rather than in the middle, so it has a relatively high polar moment of inertia, making it less responsive to steering inputs than a lighter, midengine machine. But so, too, does this behavior also make the SLS GT3 more stable and more forgiving — more friendly, really.

Are Payment Plans Available?
The 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 is available to buy now, and ready to race. Mercedes anticipates it will sell at least 20 examples to various European race teams before it will make any available to Americans. Until then we'll have to be content with the cool video on the Web site dedicated to the SLS AMG GT3.

Even Mercedes appears surprised that the car is so popular. But it's easy to understand why. First of all, it's properly quick, and has a good chance to run at the sharp end of the GT3 class. Second, the car looks completely different than the usual suspects from Audi, BMW, Corvette and Porsche. And finally, this is a Mercedes, so it's built to a standard that ranks driver safety with the same importance as outright speed.

As for us, we just love the way it drives, even more so than the way it looks or sounds. What more could a wealthy gentleman racer want? A shame, then, that we fail to qualify as one on every count.

Edmunds attended a manufacturer-sponsored event, to which selected members of the press were invited, to facilitate this report.