Mercedes-Benz: Fast heavyweights
WHERE YOU MEET The name Close-up of the Mercedes-Benz Museum series says it all. Each episode tells surprising, exciting and background stories. This time the focus is on the Atego racing truck.
The bright red giant looks unusual high up in the steep curve of the Mythos 7 room amid the low and sleek motorsport vehicles. From the mid-1980s until 2001, the European Truck Racing Championship title went thirteen times to drivers with trucks from Mercedes-Benz.
French pilot at the start
The Atego race truck presented in the museum is the vehicle of the 2001 season of Ludovic Faure. With an equally red Atego, the Frenchman became European champion in the Super Race Class category on October 4, 1998. He competed for the Tiger Racing Team Dehnhardt. In Jarama, Spain, a third and a second place in both races was enough for him to win the title. Mercedes-Benz won the Constructors' Championship by a large margin.
To 100 km/h in four seconds
It's impressive how a racing truck weighing around five tons effortlessly accelerates to racing speed and tackles the curves, accompanied acoustically by the distinctive working noise of the large-volume engine and the whistling of the turbochargers. It gets from a standstill to 100 km/h in just around four seconds. The top speed is 160 km/h.
The Super Race Class trucks are thoroughbred racing vehicles. They merely look like normal semitrailer tractors. Everything about the chassis, driveline and cockpit is optimized for fast driving in competition. The 315/70 R 22.5 tires, for example, are not standard tires but low-profile racing tires. The Atego was the third development stage from Mercedes-Benz, and its first season of service in 1998.
12 liters of displacement and 1500 hp
The OM 501 LAR was the engine of choice for Mercedes' race trucks from 1996. The V6 high-performance diesel engine has high-pressure injection and two turbochargers with high-pressure compressors and charge air cooling. From a displacement of around twelve liters, it develops 1100 kW (1496 hp) within a comparatively low engine speed window of 2000 to 2200 rpm. Torque is 5000 Newton meters.
