page_title: Mercedes-Benz in motorsport
section_title: Sportscar racing
hierarchical_section_title: Mercedes-Benz in motorsport / Sportscar racing
context_page_description: Throughout its long history, Mercedes-Benz has been involved in a range of motorsport activities, including sportscar racing and rallying, and is currently active in Formula Three, Formula E and Formula One.
context_section_description: It was in 1952 that Mercedes-Benz returned to racing after the war, again with Alfred Neubauer as team manager. The gull-winged Mercedes-Benz 300SL, won several races in 1952 including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana, and did well in other important races such as the Mille Miglia.
  Mercedes-Benz was also dominant in sports car racing during the 1950s. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR was derived from the W196 Formula One car for use in the 1955 World Sportscar Championship season. At Le Mans that year, a disaster occurred in which a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR collided with another car, killing more than eighty spectators. The team went on to win the two remaining races of the season, and won the Manufacturer's championship, but it had already been planned at the beginning of that year that the company would retire its teams at the end of the 1955 season. In fact in the aftermath of the Le Mans disaster, it would be several decades until Mercedes-Benz returned to front line motorsport.
  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mercedes returned to competition through the tuning company AMG (later to become a Mercedes-Benz subsidiary), which entered the big Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3 V8 sedan in the Spa 24 Hours and the European Touring Car Championship.
  In 1985 Mercedes-Benz returned to the World Sportscar Championship as an engine supplier for the privateer Sauber team. The first car produced by this relationship, the Sauber C8 was not particularly successful. However the successor, the C9 won several races, including 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1989.
  After the Sauber team parted company with their sponsor Kouros at the end of 1987, Mercedes-Benz increased their involvement with Sauber for the 1988 season to become a factory entrant under the Sauber-Mercedes name. Still using the C9 the team won 5 races but came 2nd to the TWR Jaguar team in the championship. However, 1989 was to be a different story with Sauber-Mercedes winning all but one championship race to become world champions (including coming 1st and 2nd at the 24 Hours of Le Mans - all achieved with the C9. For the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season the C9 was replaced by the all-new C11, while the team was renamed Mercedes-Benz (though the outfit was still run by Sauber). The team dominated the season, again winning all but one race to become world champions. Mercedes-Benz eventually withdrew from sportscar racing after a dismal 1991 season with the C291.
  Mercedes-Benz returned to sportscar racing in 1997, with the CLK GTR which was entered in the new FIA GT Championship world championship series. In its first year, the CLK GTR won the championship and the drivers' championship. It would again dominate the FIA GT in 1998, and would go on to win its second championship in a row. The CLK GTR would be the last car to win the FIA GT Championship. The successor to this car, the CLR was a spectacular failure. It was entered in the 1999 Le Mans race, but a series of accidents involving the car flipping brought about the cancellation of the CLR project and Mercedes-Benz (as a factory team) has not participated in sports prototype racing since.
  In 2001, Mercedes-Benz and AMG returned to tarmac rallying, with a specially modified version of the W208 CLK55 AMG. Mercedes-Benz and AMG created a one off works Tarmac Rally Car to compete with full factory support in the 2001 Targa Tasmania tarmac rally in Australia. Mick Doohan, 5 time motorcycle champion, was chosen as the works driver. 
  In 2011, Mercedes-Benz announced that a GT3 version of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG would be made available for private racing teams. Beginning that year, the SLS AMG GT3 has taken numerous endurance racing wins at the 24 Hours of Dubai, 24 Hours of Nürburgring and 24 Hours of Spa and has won many other races in national and global GT3 championships. In 2015, the new Mercedes-AMG GT3 was launched to replace the SLS AMG GT3.
caption: Mercedes-Benz 300SL Transaxle, the 1953 prototype used in the return to motorsports.
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