Wendl: Mercedes-AMG ‘Trying to Find Its Mojo’ in WEC

Mercedes-AMG worked through “some really busy days” to prepare for its debut FIA World Endurance Championship campaign, with its head of customer racing stating the brand is ‘trying to find its mojo’ in an unfamiliar environment.

The German manufacturer will make its world championship debut in Friday’s Qatar 1812km, with a pair of Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evos entered by Iron Lynx.

Mercedes-AMG was initially left on the sidelines when the LMGT3 class was introduced last year, thus joining a year late after it struck a deal with Iron Lynx after the Italian brand split from Lamborghini.

Stefan Wendl, Mercedes-AMG’s head of customer racing, hailed the brand’s entry into the world championship, which will allow it to return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time since 1999, as a “huge step.”

“It’s very nice to enter such a platform and this level of competition and that’s why we are all excited and also very focused on [doing] a good job,” he told Sportscar365.

“It was some really busy days for the team, for our engineers which are developing the car and making the changes possible.

“Also from the ACO and WEC, they’ve been really helpful to go through all the homologation processes and made it happen on urgent notice which was very kind from them.

“Still there are some demanding topics to be sorted on the homologation side. Small details but very important details needed to be fixed on the car over the winter to be to aligned with the current LMGT3 homologation.

“Now I’m really happy after succeeding the first test session here, succeeding in scrutineering, that we can start working on it and now trying to find our mojo, let’s say our performance window.”

The Qatar 1812km will mark Mercedes-AMG’s second race working with mandated torque sensors on its cars, following on from last month’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

By comparison, the eight other manufacturers in the LMGT3 class all already have a year’s worth of running with torque sensors under their belt after the system was introduced last year.

“It’s such a complex thing,” said Wendl.

“Next to the the torque sensor topic, which took a very huge part of our capacities to make them mechanically and electronically working the whole system as they are requested.

“On the other hand also to build up the structure [and] how to work with it, so what kind of engineers we need and which kind of workload will come to us over the weekend doing testing or starting with the preparation with the rollout, how to set up all the logistics behind those processes from those guys who are supporting the teams on the spare part side for example.

“Because it’s not an easy topic to fly around those sensors and keep them updated.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s solved now because we are in the middle of this process now dealing with it coming from IMSA but also here to keep the parts the stock level always up this is not easy.”

That is on top of further changes that the brand needed to make to its car to prepare it for competition with LMGT3 parameters, which Wendl described as a “very demanding job” for Mercedes-AMG’s team of engineers and technicians.

“At the same time, one of the most challenging things is figure out what needs to be changed on this car,” he said.

“First of all, we [had] to wait for the results of the wind tunnel test.

“Before there have been some obvious things that need to be changed which we immediately released and developed into this car, like the emergency clutch or the door panels and some other things.

“But then there are also some other tweaks and small details in the technical regulation or even in the sporting regulations  needs to be done on the software side or on all other topics.

“This is a very demanding job for the technicians of the team which cover the experience of the sporting regulation and operating a car in this championship.

“At the same time of our engineer crew which are well known to this car [are] trying to align both parties and bring everything together.”