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Mercedes also felt the time was ready for an assault on Le Mans and went to work on a new CLK-LM version of the car. The car was to be lighter, lower and powered by a leaner V8 engine. Time constraints forced the AMG team to enter the previous year's CLK-GTR at the two opening rounds of the '98 FIA GT Championships. The brand new Porsche threatened the CLK's dominance with pole at Oschersleben but mechanical woes forced the new car out and victory went again the CLK. At Silverstone, the CLK-GTR also managed to scrape a narrow victory from the Porsche.
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The CLK-LM introduced for Le Mans in June 1998 |
At Le Mans in June, the CLK-LM was unveiled. Despite pole position for the race, reliability proved beyond the new car which only completed two hours. Porsche took a stunning 1-2 victory, with the winning 911 in the hands of Allan McNish, Laurent Aiello and Stephan Ortelli. The FIA GT season continued with the next race at Hockenheim and the factory team now running the CLK-LM full time. 8 more victories from 8 starts followed and, much to Porsche's dismay, Mercedes were the unbeaten champions of the year. With Porsche withdrawing it's works effort the next year, the FIA GT Championship imploded.The series would continue as a GT2 only championship with the overblown GT1 cars no longer eligible. Mercedes took the decision to concentrate solely on building a radical new challenger for Le Mans 1999.
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