An Overnight Sensation: The AMG GT4

If you have been paying attention to professional road racing in recent years — or even iRacing — you are probably aware that the Mercedes-Benz AMG GT has become something of an overnight sensation.

Obviously, it has taken a bit longer than overnight to achieve its current measure of success, but the AMG GT is becoming the go-to car, and not just because it’s available in so many different iterations, but because it’s become known as a car that is a bit easier to race than some of its peers. Of course, we know it’s not easy to drive any racecar, but the AMG is known for being more manageable than its counterparts.

Available from the factory in five GT configurations, GT2, GT3 and GT4 among them, the AMG GT4 comes fitted with a 4.0-liter biturbo V8 capable of 544 horsepower, an AMG six-speed sequential racing transaxle, double-wishbone suspension, KW dampers and 18-inch wheels wrapped with Michelin or Pirelli tires.

If you want one, all you have to do is visit AMG’s customer racing website and surf around for the car you want, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the web page, and send an email to the contact at AMG. If you are serious about the car, you can download the brochure.

The big Benz even found its way to a NASA endurance racing. Canadian driver George Staikos raced his AMG GT4 in the WERC series in SoCal a couple of years back, and is now campaigning it in different pro series in the U.S. and Canada. He also raced a Norma LMP3 in the WERC series.

“My path to buying it was maybe a little bit more interesting than most people will have,” said Staikos, who lives in Ontario, Canada. “I had that Norma LMP3 already, and I was a little frustrated because in order to drive it, I basically had to fly to California all the time. And in the summer we’ve got a racetrack right close to home and there are lots of races going on and everything. And I wanted to be able to drive there.”

Staikos was able to get his car and go racing in his new AMG GT4 in a little over a month, though he admits to having a relationship with the company already, which helped keep strings intact when he pulled them. The car comes with access to a portal within the AMG digital ecosphere, which includes all of the service and setup information, torque specs, troubleshooting manuals, spare parts, everything a team would need to get up and running and be competitive as quickly as possible.

Ironically enough, it was the AMG GTR that got Staikos interested in racing in the first place. Of course, Staikos had done a number of track days, but he admitted he wasn’t the fastest driver on track, but he really connected with the car, and something happened for him as a driver as a result. That same connection carried over to the GT4 car you see here.

In comparison, Staikos’ LMP3 car is a workout, like a kart with an enclosed driving compartment. The g forces are far more formidable than the AMG. In the WERC enduro at Willow Springs, where we photographed the car, Staikos was able to start the race on a full tank and run it till it was empty, some two hours later. What would have that looked like in the LMP3 car?

“Two hours nonstop in that car, you’d be a raisin,” Staikos said. “Yeah, that’s almost three stints in that car. You’re looking at sort of 40, 45 minute stints. It’s very, very physical in the LMP3. You’re pulling a lot higher g’s around the corners.”

Because the AMG GT4 is easier to drive than many of its counterparts, it ends up being a curse in some of the professional series because they penalize the car with balance of performance measures. That can come either in the form of added weight or in detuning the car so it makes less power, or both. The car features factory 10 tune settings on its 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8. Each click of the dial — done on a laptop — up or down, translates to about 7 horsepower. Staikos said the last IMSA race he ran, the power level was set to four, which is about 42 horsepower down, and he was saddled with 180 kilograms of added weight. At 2.2 pounds per kilogram, that’s a dramatic reduction in the car’s output.

“It feels like you’ve got an anchor when you’re going down the straights. So they tell you just drive it hard in the corners, because you can do that,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re rolling speed in the corners for sure. And normally it has the torque and the grunt, and it’s got great traction control that you don’t have to worry about that, but they just, they’re punishing you so badly that you have to. Also the car is incredibly good on brakes. The ABS is phenomenal.”

Parts support is easy because it’s handled through Multimatic in Mooresville, N.C., and all that is handled through the AMG portal. Inventory and billing are integral to the process, but Staikos was quick to praise the car’s reliability, in particular the sonorous 4.0-liter biturbo V8, which has a rebuild interval that is virtually unheard of in factory-built racecars.

“The parts get incredible mileage on them. The engine rebuild is at 40,000 kilometers, about 25,000 miles, a little bit more than that,” he said. “I don’t think I will ever rebuild that engine. I think it has maybe 7,000 kilometers on it right now, so it’s not even a quarter of the way through its lifetime.

Since homologations do have a sunset, GT3 and GT4 cars will be coming onto the secondary market. They will be pricey, of course, but they will arguably have a great deal of life left in them. A quick look at RacingJunk.com revealed an AMG GT4 model available for $175,000 and at GT3 for $359k. Expensive, but certainly no worse than a similar Acura, BMW, Lamborghini, Porsche or Aston Martin, and what are those cars like to drive?

“I drove the GTR and something just clicked with that car,” he said. “I was like, wow, and I was just steaming in that thing. I think it was the balance of that car, how easy it was to drive. So yeah, it just gave me a level of comfort with it and I realized, hey, you can slide it a little bit. You can roll speed with it and around the fast corners it’s going to grip up.”