Oh my word.
Hi everyone and welcome to the seventh episode of Inside AMG! As you can see,
today things are a little bit different. We’ve arrived at the letter G and we’re
about to arrive at the “Green Hell”, because that’s gonna be today’s topic.
We’re at the Green Hell; we’re at the Nurburgring, the proving ground for all
of our cars and we’re gonna be taking a look at the work of our engineers, our
technicians, the wizards that are working here and making sure that the right
portion of Green Hell is in every AMG. Now, this is a very, very special day for
me as well. I’ve been to the Nurburgring before a few times, but I’ve never
actually been on the track, so today is gonna be the first time for me that I
actually do a lap on the Nurburgring. Not myself, unfortunately. I’m gonna be on the
co-driver’s seat, but still a very special occasion for me. Can’t wait for that. All
right and here we are. Oh my god, this is huge! I didn’t expect that.
Wow, okay. This is impressive.
Not bad! Markus, how’s it going? – Fine, thanks! Welcome to our AMG test centre at the Nurburgring.
Not too bad! I mean, I didn’t expect this, I’ve never been here before.
This looks like quite the facility! – We are not such a small company.
At least, we produce a lot of sporty cars and that’s what’s necessary for that.
And you are basically the responsible person here at this training
or testing facility at the Nurburgring? – Many others are testing here as well. I’m
in charge of the vehicle dynamics integration team, so we have a small team
of guys who work on the overall vehicle dynamics of these cars. This is mostly done here.
So these are all your guys working here on the cars and making sure
that several portions of Green Hell gets into the cars? – Some of them are mine,
in my team, but there are some other teams here as well – for example the ESP team
or the tyre developers and the suspension guys, of course,
and my team. So we all put it together to create good vehicle dynamics
behaviour. That’s what we do here. – So you’re head of vehicle dynamics integration. That
sounds like a dream job to me. How do you get a job like that?
Most of the guys who work here have been moving bicycles, bikes, cars from the early years of their lives.
So you may have been in motorsports, or you may have been
any sporty guy on a bike or bicycle. That helps you to have the
feeling for anything that has wheels, and that’s what we are working on. – So you’re a
motorsports fanatic yourself, pretty much? – I am, as are most of these guys
here. – So, why don’t we walk around and take a look at some of the stations that
we see here? I mean, there’s so many different cars. Some of them I already
know, some of them I don’t know yet. A lot of prototypes here. – Yeah. So let’s just head
on over to that car. This is originally a GT R Pro, and now we have a
colleague working on that. John, come over to us! John is such an ESP guy, you know.
Hi, how’s it going? – The ESP system, in former
times, was a safety system only, but now, these guys contribute a lot to
the performance of our cars, because with all that they do, they preserve many
systems with good parameters so that it all contributes to good vehicle dynamics
behaviour. It’s very important. And John is one of these guys. – So ESP is not only
there for stability and security, but also for driving dynamics, a very
important factor. – Absolutely. This guy is not only a computer nerd, he knows
how to handle the fastest cars on the Nordschleife. – Not too bad, not too bad. Yeah,
I can already see that this car is modified in a certain way, so looking
forward to the things to come. – We have a special version of the GT R, yeah. We wanted to
develop a little bit quicker GT R version. – Okay, nice, nice.
That looks pretty interesting. It resembles an E-Class, but something is a
little bit off about it. – Yes, there is something different from any
other E-Class that you can buy. Especially here, you see these rims, these wheels.
These are special measuring rims. This car is full of measuring technology.
We don’t only calculate the stress that arises from the Nordschleife,
we also measure it here and this will contribute to the driving behaviour
of a future car, which is completely different than this one, but some of its
technology is already in that special E-Class. – Right, so this was
purpose-built to actually resemble a car that’s gonna come out in the future and
has all the measuring gear in it. – Jens, let’s talk about what you do. This is Jens,
and this is Michael. – Hi, I’m Jens. Nice to meet you.
And Michael is in charge of all the data analysis here.
So, what do you do with that car? I mean, Markus already told me
it’s a bit of a Frankenstein, actually. – Yes, of course. It’s our new project.
We do some measurements for the future, to see what happens with the car, with
the body, with the chassis. So at the moment I’m working with Michael together.
Maybe we can have a look at the car. – I mean, the wheels already look
pretty peculiar, being a measuring tool and everything, but this is like – oh my
god. What is all the computing power that we have in here? – You’re measuring, with
this system, a lot of ways and forces which we need to evaluate and to prove
in a chassis and in the body of a new car. We have measurement wheels with
which we can measure free forces and free moments on each wheel and we
can see if this forces the struts and how the body is. – Moving in every
axis, the car is potentially moving, you can see that with that measuring gear, right?
Yeah, we did a lot of tests today, a lot of hard tests for this car. It was
an extreme test to see and to figure out if the parts, in terms of size, are
okay and to get a lot of information for our simulation guys.
So we give the data to the simulation guys and the simulation guys
can work with this data and calculate
if the parts conform with the force, or if we have to reduce weight or to add on some stuff.
Excuse the noise, people are working in the background, as you can probably hear.
This is an extremely busy place. There are people running around, wrenching on cars
everywhere. It’s crazy. We need to go on, sorry! – Oh, no problem. Yeah, we have a lot to do.
So the next step will also be to use different tyres and to see what happens
with different tyres, with a different chassis setup. Does the measurement change, or
is it okay now? That’s what we did today. – So there’s always like a
theoretical component, but you also have to have a practical component, in
order to prove everything. – Yes, of course, you have to have it. It’s not possible only to
calculate and to simulate, so you have to see what happens with the parts on the
real track. – Very impressive, really impressive machine. Have you got something
else to show us, some more stuff? – Let’s look over there. That’s Tom, I see. Tommy’s at the station.
He’s trying to hide from us! – Tom is working on
the suspension setup of the GT 4-Door. It looks top
secret, but it’s not so much! Hi, Tom! – Hey, Tom, how’s it going?
Good, thank you! – We’re talking about the suspension setup that you are
working on. – Yes, we’re currently making a few
changes to the elastokinematic suspension, which means we’re sort of
changing, we’re adjusting some pushes on ball joints on the pickup points in
the suspension. We’re looking at the moment to optimize the comfort of the car
without losing any of the driving performance.
It’s perfect for us to be here at the Nordschleife, because it’s the most
demanding circuit in the world, so we can really look into how the
elastokinematics works over the bumps and the roads here, but also how the car handles
and how it performs on the racing track. – So you go about changing different parts
of the elastokinematics of the car, measure them, then take it out on the
track, measure again, change things again? – Exactly, exactly. We’ll go it back out on the
track now, we’ll look at how the car reacts over the bumps, if the car behaves
in a predictable way over the bumps in a fast-turning,
aggressive way, but also in a safe and predictable way. And then we’ll go
out onto the road and we’ll see how the load is transferred over the
bumps and if it is actually transferred through suspension into the car. – So not
just digital measuring tools on that car, a lot of it comes down to the driver. – A lot of it comes through our
hands, through the steering wheel. We have to feel the small vibrations. A lot of it
comes through our bums and our legs. And the pushes and the ball joints, they
transfer the energy from the road into the tyre and through the suspension into
our body, basically and this is how we we’ll feel the change that we made
and know if it was a better change or not. – Really impressive. This looks
really high-tech here, I gotta say. Are these laser-operated
systems, or what is that, exactly? – Yeah, exactly. I mean, we measure here,
through the laser system here and it’ll be detected on these points here and
this will then be able to measure the tyres with the laser. We’ll measure the toe and also the camber angles.
And then we can actually measure
within 0.01 degrees how precise or how accurate the car is set up and how
exactly we want it to be set up. – So you said you’re trying to make the car...
...you’re trying to configure some comforts into the car without losing any
of the driving dynamics? I mean, that sounds like quite the challenge.
At AMG we pride ourselves on how the car turns, how the car reacts and how
the car feels performance-wise for the driver. So for us, this is very important,
and this is something we always have to have as the highest priority for us, while
still trying to optimize comfort as much as we can. – Yeah, with all the data that we collect and with
the measuring technology that we have and so on, we never forget that we are making the car for
the customer. He feels the car and an AMG can be felt. It’s a well handling car,
and we prove that on the Nordschleife. We’ve heard a lot of words. Shall we go to the Norschleife,
to the Green Hell? – I think we should go to the Green Hell and prove what we just
talked about. – Let’s go then, let’s move! – Perfect!
Felix, I am happy to present you your first ever Nurburgring lap.
I can’t tell you how excited I am right now. This is special!
Let’s go for the real thing! – Let’s go.
Wow!
Now we’re going for the Hatzenbach section and I have the gearbox on automatic. In
automatic, it switches just like a sporty driver would do. I’m very
pleased with the gearbox on automatic.
Now we are heading towards a very fast section. This is Quiddelbach, Flugplatz
and Schwedenkreuz.
Now we have a little jump.
Look over there, that’s nice. Schwedenkreuz. – Nice view! Nice view indeed.
Oh my word.
It’s always on bumps where we need to maintain contact to the ground.
The compression! – This is our compression area.
Here we have Adenauer Forst.
Now we’re going down towards the deepest point of the whole track, which
is the village of Adenau.
Wow, the the forces under braking...! – Compression again.
There is a long, steep uphill section, where we need power.
My god, this car just feels amazingly quick!
It is amazingly quick!
Now we’re coming to the famous carousel. – Now it’s gonna get bumpy!
Unbelievable! – The car need to stand that. This is Nurburging testing!
That was the famous Brünnchen and now we’re going to Pflanzgarten 1 and 2, which is
a small jump. We’re gonna have some air time now!
This is Schwalbenschwanz, also a banked corner and now the last two two right-handers
before we go to the long Döttinger Höhe straight.
The car is very precise – I can
put it exactly to the curb without hitting it. And now we need power again, for the long
Döttinger straight. I see on the dash we have five hundred newton metres now,
which is quite something.
This is close to the end.
20,837 metres of excitement. – Oh. My. Word.
I’m just speechless, I’ve never, ever, ever experienced anything quite like this.
And not a lot of stress for the car. We do it all the time
Oh my word! Wow. Nothing can prepare you for that. That was absolutely
amazing, I’ve never experienced speed quite like that. – Good job, man!
You’re strong. – Good job to you Markus. That was absolutely amazing!
And the cars. They can handle it, that’s our job.
They can handle it. – The Mercedes-AMG CLA 45 S feels as fast as... I’m just lost for words,
really, I can’t even begin to describe how amazing this was. Thank you, thank you,
thank you for having us here and showing us how the Green Hell really
turns these cars into real performance machines. Absolutely amazing. – When you
asked at the beginning, “Why do you test here at the Green Hell? Why are all the
others here?” Now you know why.– I absolutely do. – I remember an old slogan that
was an old Nurburgring advertisement. It was “Jeder lobt, was Nürburgring-erprobt.”
Everybody praises what’s been tested on the Nurburgring. That’s the reason. That’s
the result. – Now I know why. So there you have it folks.
The Green Hell, the most important race track for AMG or for any petrolhead,
really. It’s such an amazing place. I’m so glad I was here today to experience
firsthand what it means to be testing on this absolutely unbelievable proving
ground. So if you like what you’ve seen today, make sure you subscribe to our
channel. Make sure you hit the little bell icon
so you get notified whenever we upload something new. If you like this video, hit
the like button, write in the comments what you’d like us to shoot next. We
always value your feedback. I’ve gotta calm down now and sit down for a
second, because that was something else and we’ll see you guys in the next
one. Bye bye!
One more thing – to commemorate this very special day of
work, I say we take a very special commemorative picture using the TRACK
PACE app. So all I do is scan my surroundings here and then add a few
nice objects. Nice! And a little flag there...
...and click.
Beautiful. And you can do
that at home, using the TRACK PACE app, so go download
it in the App Store.