- April 24 2026
- More Tech Talk
Première at the 24 Hours of Spa Race: For the first time, a Mercedes-AMG GT3 styled by world renown rock band Linkin Park sees action on the racetrack. Three of the band members, Chester Bennington, Dave Farrell and Joe Hahn are big car and AMG fans, and did not want to miss the opportunity to personally present the vehicle designed specifically for the motorsport classic in Spa to the crowd of racing enthusiasts. They even had the privilege of waving the start flag in Spa and frenetically cheered on the Mercedes-AMG driven by Yelmer Buurman (NED), Maro Engel (GER) and Bernd Schneider (GER) from the garage of the BLACK FALCON AMG Team. The Linkin Park GT3 is the second joint project as part of the "Two Stages – One Passion" cooperation between Mercedes-AMG and Linkin Park. The band had already contributed their song "Papercut" to the world première of the new Mercedes-AMG GT R in late June, providing the fitting sound for the international campaign.
Paddy Lowe, Executive Director (Technical)
A good day to start the weekend, with no major issues on either side of the garage, a full program completed and our pace looking reasonably good. The main focus has been on understanding the Soft and Supersoft tyres – particularly on long runs, to see which race strategies will make most sense on Sunday. There was a little bit of stress this afternoon with race direction concerning track limits at T1 – particularly concerning Lewis’ position with two reprimands already to his name – so we compromised our program somewhat to ensure that he avoided a third. Overall, though, it’s great to be back at the Hockenheimring and we’re looking forward to a good battle in qualifying tomorrow.
Affalterbach (GER). Since 1967, the heart of Mercedes-AMG has been beating at the race track. With its motorsport DNA, the performance brand from Affalterbach enthuses fans and customers all over the world. Among them are the AMG Customer Sport Teams who have been successful at international level with the SLS AMG GT3 since 2011. In the past five years, numerous titles and legendary race wins were scored with the gullwing. Simultaneously, AMG has been working on the continuous expansion of its Customer Sports program. In 2016, the arrival of the Mercedes-AMG GT3 and the introduction of the AMG Performance Teams marks the start of a new era for the manufacturer from Affalterbach that got off to a perfect start with the historic quadruple victory in the Nürburgring 24-hour race.
Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
We’re delighted with today’s result. To take a one-two finish at a circuit that hasn’t been so good to us in the past two years is really satisfying. This place has been Red Bull and Ferrari territory, so it just shows what a great place we have got to with our chassis and engine package that we were able to take such a strong finish and control the race like we did. It was a race that needed a lot of management and we had told the drivers all weekend that winning would depend on making the tires last. They both did this really well – though when things got a bit close for comfort in the second stint, we asked Lewis to pick up the pace and he responded well to build the gap we needed after Red Bull rolled the dice with Ricciardo’s strategy. The back markers were a challenge like always here, particularly some of the usual suspects, but they didn’t end up influencing the outcome which was good. There has been a lot of talk about the Championship situation but, if this was a football match, we’d have only just completed the first half. There’s still a very long way to go this season. We have seen a lot of action so far and I am sure there will be much more to come…
