Race cars are exotic beasts that require all kinds of care and attention, they aren’t simply plug and play like most normal cars. It’s for this reason that Formula 1 cars take hours to get ready to race and vintage racers require the kind of love that we’d never normally give our daily drivers. Now, Mercedes-Benz has given a thorough run through of the 16 steps required to start up a C11 racer that was driven by Michael Schumacher in the 1990s.
The car in question is the Sauber Mercedes-Benz C11, which was a Group C prototype race car introduced for the 1990 World Sports-Prototype Championship. The car was built by famed Swiss racing outfit Sauber and was powered by a mighty Mercedes five liter twin turbo V8 that kicked out 960 horsepower. It was driven by the likes of Schumacher, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Jonathan Palmer across races in 1990 and 1991.
Now, the thoroughbred racer is a display piece that Mercedes wheels out for special occasions. Special occasions just like this weekend’s Goodwood Festival Of Speed, where the car took part in a parade that honored the German automaker’s historic ties with motorsport.
Prior to its run up the famed Goodwood hill climb, Mercedes took to social media to show off the prep that goes into getting a car like this ready to race. Unsurprisingly, it’s a wildly complex affair that takes a lot of steps, an awful lot of steps. If we’re counting everything the narrator explains, there are 16 steps to starting up this historic racer, to be precise.
Before taking to the Goodwood hill, the car is jacked up off the ground, and then not one but two hoods are lifted off to reveal the inner workings of the C11. The radiator cover is then removed, the battery is connected and the steering wheel is taken off. The driver then climbs inside and the wheel you just removed is re-attached.
This is followed by all kinds of pumps that need to be turned on and, surprisingly, switched off again, motors that need to be primed and elements of the car that need to warm up. The whole choreographed routine is outlined in the video above in satisfying detail. Finally, after an eye-watering 16 steps the fantastic old racer is ready for the Goodwood hill.
Thankfully, the culmination of the video is the rumble of its Mercedes V8 roaring into life, which makes all those meticulous processes worthwhile. After that, it’s off to the start line for the C11, where it ran up the Goodwood hill climb course flanked by all manner of historic Mercedes. What a site for sore eyes that must have been.
Despite its eye-watering power, the driver of the C11 was able to keep the car under control through its run, avoiding the kind of embarrassing mishaps that befell a Lotus Evija driver and Travis Pastrana at this year’s Goodwood Festival Of Speed.