Few could have expected Mercedes to end its first World Endurance Championship with a podium, but Maxime Martin, Lin Hodenius and Martin Berry’s second-place finish in the Bahrain finale was no fluke. The venerable Mercedes-AMG GT3 was among the pacesetters in the LMGT3 field all weekend, both in race and qualifying trim, and the #61 Iron Lynx crew ultimately came short of victory by less than a second. It marked a remarkable turnaround from just seven months earlier, when Mercedes’ first WEC campaign had begun in disastrous fashion in Qatar.
It has not been a smooth journey for Mercedes in LMGT3 so far, but given how late the programme was green-lit, it was never going to be an easy ride.
