Commercial Break: Fantastic Five Race the Ring

Mercedes-Benz had quite the weekend at the Nürburgring. The company proved that its cars have tons of go, when the Black Falcon Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 took the overall win in the 2013 edition of the ADAC 24 Rennen at the Nürburgring.

But the saying is show then go. Mercedes-Benz did their best to make the participants feel welcome at the 24 hour race when they put 7 times world champion Michael Schumacher in the cockpit of his two-year-old Mercedes Benz F1 W02 and had him drive the Nürburgring. Schumacher lapped the both the Grand Prix Circuit (he does have a corner named after him that he will defend) and the Nordschleife. For some added encouragement to drive fast, Mercedes put some competition on track to chase. Bernd Mayländer, the man who drives the safety car during F1 safety car periods, got downgraded from his normal SLS to an A45 AMG. Karl Wendlinger, a former F1 driver, was tabbed with the duty of driving the E63AMG. Schumacher’s former F1 teammate Nico Rosberg was behind the wheel of the orange SLS Black Series.  Bernd Schneider has the most experience with DTM cars, and he was behind the wheel of the SLS GT3.

The lap time Schumacher put in wasn’t recorded. For promotional events like this Formula 1 cars have less than an ideal set-up and run on very hard demo tires.

Can’t help but notice all the go-pros attached to the cars. We’ll be on the look-out for that on-board footage and get it on MBWorld as soon as we can…in the mean time enjoy the two attached videos.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf8QsLvWOjI?rel=0]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJco1_A4NAk?rel=0]