Mercedes Formula 1 team principal and CEO Toto Wolff has discussed the possibility of the team returning to the prestigious Le Mans 24 Hours.
Wolff explained that Mercedes would consider a return to Le Mans if the Balance of Performance regulation was removed.
“Le Mans… I’m a racer. The Le Mans 24 Hours is one of the greatest races in the world,” the Mercedes chief explained on the Bloomberg Hot Pursuit podcast, when asked about the possibility of the German marque returning to the event.
“Formula 1, for me – obviously I’m biased – is the best there is. It’s the best drivers, the quickest cars, the greatest tracks. But if I had to say what’s next? Le Mans 24 Hours and the Indy 500. And then, for insiders, the Nürburgring 24 Hours. That, for me, is the top of the top.
“When I’m not at a Formula 1 weekend, I can watch a Le Mans race pretty much through the night. I’m following the live feed, and I know some of the drivers, so I have a personal interest.”
Mercedes had a disastrous outing with the 300 SLR in 1955, driven by Pierre Levegh. He was involved in a collision with another car that launched the Mercedes-Benz into the air, resulting in Levegh’s tragic death and the deaths of 83 spectators who were hit with debris. The team withdrew from the sport at the end of that year.
Making a return in 1999, Mercedes introduced the CLR. However, it was aerodynamically unstable, causing the cars to become airborne.
Toto Wolff, Executive Director of Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team
Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images
Since then, Mercedes has not returned apart from in the GT3 category, which it has done as part of a customer programme with Italian outfit Iron Lynx.
“As Mercedes, it’s something that we’ve done in the past,” Wolff added. “But we weren’t particularly… that wasn’t our happiest place. We had a very bad accident in the ’50s when we exited, and then some of our prototypes were flying – literally taking off – in the ’90s and early 2000s. I think it was the 1990s.
“But what it is for me today is, we are concentrating on the main platform, and that is Formula 1. It’s what we want to do. It captures 99% of the audience. Everything else comes second.
“Now, we have entered with Mercedes in the GT3 category. That’s something we’re looking at as our customer programme.
“And then there’s the little caveat to all this: at Mercedes, we are racing people. We don’t like BoPs – we don’t like Balance of Performance. We don’t like somebody assessing your power, your energy consumption, your weight, your driver skill…
“You spend so much time and money and effort developing the quickest car, and then you’re being given 10 kilogrammes of ballast,” he continued. “I don’t want that. I just want to build the quickest car.
“Formula 1 has shown how it should be done. Give us a cost cap. Do more of that – give everybody a cost cap. You cannot spend more than – whatever you said – 30-40 million. And within this 30-40 million, you can do what you want. I mean, there are still regulations, but nobody needs to bluff in pre-season testing or qualifying. It’s pure racing.
“If that were to happen, then Le Mans would absolutely be something we would look at. But at the moment, with BoP – having some officials judge whether you’re too quick, adding 10 kilogrammes to your car or taking it out of someone else’s the next day – that’s not for us at the moment.”
In this article
Lydia Mee
Formula 1
Le Mans
Toto Wolff
Mercedes
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