Mercedes-AMG Customer Racing’s recent ‘Champions United’ event, bringing together the brand’s customers from across the globe to celebrate the achievements of 2025, also offered selected media the opportunity to see and hear more about the present and future plans of the Affalterbach-based outfit.
One opportunity offered was a sit-down with the head of Customer Racing, Stefan Wendl, and the head of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport, Christoph Sagemüller, to trot through the achievements of the year past and the plans and challenges ahead.
Stefan let’s start with you. Tell us about 2025. It’s been a successful year, but also a difficult one at times from a Mercedes-AMG perspective. What stands out?
Stefan Wendl: “It was an interesting season, but also challenging with new adventures in the WEC for us coming as a surprise, and it was a tough challenge, I have to say.
“On the other hand, it also brought a lot of positive emotions for the first time in Le Mans with our cars. Finishing the season after some tough results with the podium result was really, really well deserved, and personally, I was delighted to be there to see it.
“Across the season, we won a lot of championships overall, 49 in fact. As part of that, we won the SRO World Challenge manufacturer’s award for a seventh consecutive time, and that still makes me proud every year. It was a small margin only this time. So our competition gets stronger and stronger.
“At the end, we had three frustrating weeks, starting in Valencia, losing the (GT World Challenge Europe) Sprint championship. Then, a week later in Barcelona, we finished as runner-up in the Endurance Championship, and missed out on the runner-up spot in the overall Championship with Winward, Lucas (Auer) and Maro (Engel). And then one week later again at Indianapolis, then we finished runner-up with JMF.
“I hoped that we could win one or two of those championships, because both teams and the drivers would have fully deserved it.
“Also, JMF, being in the Pro class for the first time, they did a great job over the season, and also did well in Indianapolis, but the red flag and the rain came at the wrong time, and then there was nothing we could do about it.”
Affalterbach Racing GMBH was announced by Mercedes-AMG in 2024 as the entity which would service the brand’s customer racing efforts. This was in part a replacement for the long-time partnership that Mercedes-AMG had with HWA, which had been responsible for building the current range of GT2, GT3 and GT4 AMG GT derivatives.
This must have been a lot of work, and with more to do, right?
Wendl: “Yes. The next thing in front of us is clearly the move to the new company for our customer racing service operation to set everything up. We still have partners in place in our markets in Asia, Australia and US, we can trust and continue also working with and with the new company, which is now actually working, starting this week, in changing the stock to the AFF stock, and same time they’ve been in the process since April, to purchase their own stock, to merge those two so that they can start selling parts to the customers from January.
“The company is currently based in a Mercedes-Benz facility not far away, 14-15 kilometres from here, next to the museum. This, though, is not the permanent plan. This is just the first, best facilities they can move into now because they have close to 100 hired people. That includes some familiar faces, especially those guys who are in direct contact with our customers, from logistics, from support engineering.
“So we get a few guys coming with us into this new adventure, and then also new staff for developing resources. We have a good mix of well-known faces and fresh guys from other companies, which makes us stronger and brings some fresh ideas into us.”
Is this just about servicing customer teams at this point?
Wendl: “Yes, but this company will be responsible in future for everything belonging to customers. So it’s for the after-sales system, selling parts, being on the racetrack as a contact person on technical behaviours, the technical service of those parts, but also the development of the new successor car. And also, in future, to produce those cars.”
At this point a quick word about HWA and what’s left to do there? Presumably, the production line for the current (GT3) car is still active?
Wendl: “First of all, it’s very important to mention that we are very thankful for the relationship we had with HWA and for everything we achieved together. And we have a few jobs left there, producing some of our cars, but when they are finished with it, the core system will be run completely from Affalterbach Racing Company.
“That doesn’t mean that we are not working together with HWA in the future, on specific projects or whatever may happen. It’s a transition. We are still in contact with them, and we are friendly neighbours, and we try to keep up a good relationship.”
Eventually, the new company will be based in Affalterbach, is that the long-term target?
Wendl: “Yes. It’s not easy, we need to wait for the right time, spot and for the right facility to make it happen.”
Moving over to you Christoph, we’ve now seen the first images of the development version, at least of the successor car for your current GT racing platform.
What more can you tell us about the ambition for that, the time scale, the breadth of the product line that may grow from it? With the current platform, we’ve had GT4, GT2, GT3, and a number of different track versions of that car…
Christoph Sagemüller: “Primarily, the focus right now is on the GT3, of course, because this is the backbone of our (Customer Racing) system. We have all the attention on this car, of course, we are also thinking about what this platform is capable of in the future. But it’s too early to talk about this right now. So right now we are really fully focused on the GT3, and then we’ll take it from there.”
As we understand it, this is a bit different from most other GT3 platforms?
Sagemüller: “For every GT3 vehicle, you need to have a certified street version of it. So in the logic, there is a streetcar first, and then you have the racecar. This won’t change, because the regulation says it has to be like this.”
When will we hear more about the car?
Sagemüller: “In the next year, from the beginning of next year, from time to time, you will see and hear more about the car. But the whole timeline does not depend solely on the development of a car. There are various factors that are influencing the timeline of car, including the street car certification. So it’s hard to predict right now, and this is why we stay a little reserved.”
So is the aspiration for it to race in ’27?
Sagemüller: “We would love to race right now. But okay, but also there’s a question of what racing means. Of course, our plan also is to do certain kinds of test races, at a certain point.”
Last year, we talked about Hypercar, and the only thing we’ve seen move forward on that count publicly was the answer that Toto (Wolff) gave, which is that he’s not interested in a BoP formula.
At the moment, from last year, you wanted to get the new company up and running. That’s now in place, you’ve got the new GT3 next. That’s not done yet, but that’s coming. What next, anything beyond GT3?
Sagemüller: “We are focusing on GT3 right now. This is the most important thing, it’s the backbone of our programme. So we really need to get this in the right place, at the right time. So this is our full focus.
“I think there’s nothing more to add at the moment concerning Hypercar, what we’ve already discussed, and also what Toto said. So I mean, this is our common opinion, but I’m curious to see how this develops, actually, also this year, now, with new brands coming, others may be going.
“So I mean, we will observe, but still focus on GT3 first.”