Cheap Thrills -- Mercedes-benz Durability wins 24 Hours of LeMons
Article by Rod Diridon, Jr.
Photography by Nick Pons
“They’re such great cars from the factory they make strong competitors.”
Thinking of Mercedes Benz as a natural competitor in the budget 24 Hours of LeMons endurance races may seem counterintuitive. Fielding the distinguished marque in a series that limits the value of cars to $500 – not counting tires, brakes and safety gear – seems somehow almost undignified. In spite of, or perhaps because of this, a group of die-hard Silver Star aficionados has accepted the challenge – and won – in a banner 2011 racing season.
While fast enough to be competitive, the real virtue of Mercedes-Benz for endurance racing – just as it was on the Panamericana and Mille Miglia in the day – lies in durability. True to the German form-follows-function ideal, Mercedes cars have been built solidly enough to withstand the harshest of on-track beatings.
“Any car you can take out and drive full throttle for 14 or 15 hours at a time, even a racecar, is impressive,” said the budget race’s founder, Jay Lamm, also known as chief perpetrator. “The fact that Mercedes street cars are doing it successfully is a testament to how well screwed together they are.”
Due in part to their relative obscurity in the LeMons paddock, “Most people regard Mercedes entries as just slower BMWs,” confided LeMons Associate Perpetrator Nick Pon. “But they’re such great cars from the factory, they make strong competitors.”
The results speak for themselves: In the 2011 season, Mercedes teams clocked two overall wins; one Index of Effluency award; and numerous top-ten finishes. That’s impressive work considering Mercedes were fielded by only a dozen of the approximate 1,500 teams last season. Here are some of their achievements.
Summit Point Raceway 2011
Overall Winner Justin Andress and his Richmond, Virginia-based “Opulence We Has It” team fielded a rattle-can gold 1998 S500. The irony of the entry was not lost on race organizers. “There is nothing more useless than a totaled luxury car,” Pon said, laughing. “Plus, the thing going from being some investment banker’s commuter to a LeMons track car is one of the farthest falls from grace we’ve seen.”
The running-but-wrecked S500 was sold to the team for $1 by a friend whose wife was stranded by the vehicle on numerous occasions and wished it to “die a LeMons death.” Despite the negative karma from previous owners, the car was mechanically strong and simply required brake upgrades to be competitive. “We cooked the brakes so badly, it shook like the shuttle re-entering the atmosphere and fused the pads to the caliper pistons,” admitted Andress. In the spirit of LeMons, the team’s solution was a set of race pads and cooling ducts fabricated from paint funnels and dryer vents.
While the big Merc recorded a mere 19th-fastest lap of the day, Opulence took home the 2011 Summit Point Capital Offense trophy for the car’s reliability and the team’s shrewd pit strategy.
MSR Houston Raceway, 2011 Overall Winner
High school friends Chris DeZevallos and Brian Schneider have shared an appreciation for the Silver Star since 1984; it’s no wonder they fielded a worn-out 1986 5-speed Mercedes 300E in the 24 Hours of LeMons. Their Houston-based Team BenzGay has enjoyed poking fun at often-conservative Texan social views. “It’s a blast to win in a big pink, E-Class Mercedes with a rainbow racing stripe,” DeZevallos said with a huge grin.
Things haven’t always been smooth for the team; an improperly torqued wheel liberated itself at-speed from the car and an encounter with a tire wall damaged the lower radiator hose, cooking the head gasket. “Those were operator error,” DeZevallos clarified. “Mechanically, the Mercedes never misses a beat.” Despite its challenges, the team was smart about how to win at LeMons. “A 23-gallon tank from a 1994 diesel was a huge range-improvement,” Schneider said.
And, win they did at MSR Houston, taking the checkered flag 17 laps ahead of the second-place finisher. “Not bad for a car made for worldwide taxi use,” Schneider reminded us.
MSR Houston Raceway, 2011 Index of Effluency
Winner The Holy Grail of the 24 Hours of LeMons is the Index of Effluency award, given to the team that does the best with the least-competitive car. Brandon Spears and his College Station, Texas-based “B-League Film Society” team, did just that with a 1967 Mercedes Benz 200. The 4-speed, 2.0 4-cylinder engine car was dressed in a “Dr. Strangelove” Cold War theme, complete with a bomb on its roof to drive into the ground.
“I love the refined, over-engineered feeling of Mercedes as race cars, but there’s not much aftermarket support,” Spears said. When the car initially “wallowed around corners to the point you could barely see over the hood,” Spears said the team adapted a front sway bar from a truck and springs from a dirt-track racecar. The shifter was rebuilt using parts from a VW Rabbit. “The Benz racing community is really close, guys pitch in and help each other,” Spears noted. “Benz is so underrepresented that we all want the Star to place as high as it can.” This camaraderie was evident when DeZevallos’ 300E team slowed-down at the end of the race to give the ’67 car one more lap to cross the finish line together.
Mercedes has competed and won at the highest levels of auto racing. The 24 Heures du Mans, Formula 1, and DTM have all seen victories for the Silver Star. At first blush, casting its 24 Hours of LeMons success in the same light may seem like finding a blue-light special at Nordstrom. But with further consideration, Mercedes’ success in budget racing is a testament to the engineering and manufacturing quality we’ve come to enjoy.
“If your goal is endurance, to go out there and race with a bunch of other guys who only nominally know how to drive, the car you want is a Mercedes,” Lamm said. “It’ll keep running and will take care of you if you get hit. The Mercedes shrug off damage that would have ended an Italian car and keep on going.”
And, if these teams have anything to do with it, the marque will continue to keep on going with the 24 Hours of LeMons for years to come.
Above: John Heflin and his Ziegel Scheißhaus Racing team ran their “Rotten Sau” red 190E 16V car cobbled together from a 1986 and a 1987 16V.
Above: Jeff Meyer put together this version from parts of three 1973 Mercedes 280 race cars abandoned in his storage yard that he got for $50 worth of paperwork. Though the livery mimics the venerable AMG Red Sow, the car was a trifle slower on the track than its inspiration.