Are you ready? Can you handle, a double whammy of the brutal, thunderous Sauber Mercedes C11? Here you go. Round two, coming up, now.
The Mercedes-Benz C11 was a Group C prototype race car introduced in 1989/90 for the World Sportscar Championship. Built by Sauber as a Sauber C9 successor, it was given the name C11, instead of C10, due to the difficult pronunciation of C10 in German, with C and 10 being pronounced nearly identically. With the C11 it was the first time that Mercedes Benz chose to put their name on the car, instead of simply using Sauber.
The car in the video is chassis 89.C11.00 and it was built in late summer 1989 for the 1990 WSPC racing season. But as soon as the car was completed the FIA changed the technical regulations for the 1990 season which means the car would have needed other modifications in order to respect the new rules. Rather than modify this chassis, Sauber decided to use it as the prototype C11 test car.
89.C11.00 was used at 10 tests with all the official factory drivers driving it at some point (Mario Baldi, Michael Schumacher, Jochen Mass, Jean Louis Schlesser, Heinz H. Frentzen, Karl Wendlinger). It was never raced, all the major development work on aerodynamics and general chassis set up for the C11 programme was carried out with this car.
The Sauber – Mercedes C11 is moved by a M119 5.0L twin-turbo V8 engine which was able to produce 750 bhp at 7000 rpm and 800 Nm of torque at 3500 rpm with a top speed of 400 km/h.
Watch and hear it screaming around Spa-Francorchamps circuit during the 2017 Spa Classic racing weekend!
Group C Sports Cars, the thunder of the '80s 