30 YEARS SINCE THE SAUBER-MERCEDES C11 WON THE WORLD SPORTS CAR CHAMPIONSHIP. Car news.

30 years ago Sauber-Mercedes won the drivers’ and team championship in the 1990 World Sports Car Championship with the legendary C11. Jean-Louis Schlesser and Mauro Baldi won the driver’s championship with Jochen Mass 2nd in the other C11. The 3 experienced racing drivers were accompanied by 3 highly promising young racing drivers from the German Formula 3 Championship. They were Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Micheal Schumacher and Karl Wendlinger. During their test sessions at the Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet France towards the end of 1989, Peter Sauber summed up the drivers by saying…

“Frentzen was the fastest, Schumacher was hardly any slower, drove very consistently and was very interested in the technology even then. Wendlinger was the most cautious and really didn’t want to break anything.”

In the 1990 season the 3 junior drivers partnered with Jochen Mass. Pairings of Mass/Wendlinger and Mass/Schumacher each won a world championship race. As many of you may know all 3 of the junior drivers went on to have wonderful F1 careers…especially 7 times Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher and Heinz-Harald Frentzen – who won 3 Grand Prix races and was runner-up in the 1997 Formula One World Championship. Karl Wendlinger made his Formula One debut in 1993 with Sauber. He is the AMG Brand Ambassador and instructor at the AMG Driving Academy.
In 1990 the Sauber-Mercedes team won 8 out of 9 races in the World Sportscar Championship in Group C.

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