Mercedes-AMG has finally been confirmed as the new manufacturer in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The German car giant has teamed up with Iron Lynx, who will run two Mercedes-AMG LMGT3 cars from 2025 onwards.
That marks an end to the Iron Lynx and Lamborghini collaboration, that has been in place throughout the 2024 season in the FIA WEC. The future of the Italian brand in both Hypercar and LMGT3 is currently unknown.
Mercedes is another of the big car brands, that have a sportscar history, but so far haven’t competed in the FIA WEC until now, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans. They won the race overall in 1952 and 1989 and gave it another try in the late 90’s, but that didn’t end up as expected.
We should point out, that it’s currently just a LMGT3 programme that has been confirmed. According to Dailysportscar, there is an evaluation ongoing regarding a Hypercar programme, which most likely will be confirmed at a late stage. The first step is to enter their GT3 car, which will be upgraded to LMGT3 specs, which includes a Torque sensor amongst other things. The function of the Torque sensor measure the real-time power output to the rear wheels, so the technical staff from the series can monitor everything, and hand out potential penalties, should there be some over-power issues. The same system will be run in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship 2025 but with a different vendor of the sensors.
There is no news regarding the driver lineup for the two cars, but we must expect Mercedes to bring some drivers to the programme, just like we see at all the other manufacturers.
The announcement today doesn’t have any immediate effect on the Iron Dames programme, since they have a long-standing collaboration with Porsche, who has already been confirmed in the Asian Le Mans Series 2024/25 and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, as is expected to be the weapon of choice in the European Le Mans Series and FIA World Endurance Championship too. We have seen both Michelle Gatting and Celia Martin test the 911 LMGT3.R model at the end-of-season tests in both ELMS in Portimao and FIA WEC in Bahrain.
The FIA World Endurance Championship 2025 starts on 28 February at Lusail International Circuit in Qatar.
