This weekend marks the 55th anniversary of the launch of the historic AMG Mercedes division, which continues to this day and forms part of the name of the current Formula 1 team.
AMG rose to fame when its famous Mercedes 300 SEL 6.8 AMG finished second overall and won its class at the 1971 Spa 24 Hours .
Despite its enormous size, the car beat much more agile machines, and was famously nicknamed “Red Pig”.
To celebrate AMG’s anniversary, Mercedes created a special livery that blended its silver with the 300 SEL AMG pattern on the front.
The livery was put on a show car in the fan zone at the Belgian Grand Prix and received high praise from fans, some of whom suggested that Mercedes should have raced it this weekend.
But beyond Mercedes’ hesitation to go for special liveries after the 2019 German GP disaster when, to celebrate 125 years in motorsport, they painted the car white, there were other practical reasons why the team chose to keep it alone. in a show car.
Mercedes director Toto Wolff said: “We have three races in a row. So we couldn’t put such a big sticker. We also have an overweight problem on the car, so it wouldn’t have worked in that sense either.”
“That’s why we’ve opted for as little impact on performance as possible.”
Instead of using the red livery, Mercedes opted for a tweak to carry a large retro number on the cars of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, as well as a special 55th anniversary stamp.
The design of that 55th anniversary sticker sparked some amusement on social media as some pointed out that it appeared to have the same colors as a well-known porn website.
The team ended up tweaking the design before the first free practice sessions after failing to get the logo to fit perfectly with its usual livery.
Asked about the comparisons that were drawn to the adult website, Wolff said, “I wouldn’t have made that association. It’s 55 years old.”
“AMG is the performance brand of Mercedes and we are proud to carry the brand. And this is basically the homage to the first car that ran here at Spa successfully, which I got to drive a replica of a few days ago. It’s a birthday.”
