As the rumors fly around the F1 world of Bernd Maylander’s retirement as the F1 Safety Car driver, I decided to through my hat into the ring of possible successors.

So I decided get behind the wheel of a Mercedes AMG GT S to get some feel for my new job. I did so by heading over to Exotics Racing in Las Vegas, and signed up for 7 laps in a MAMGGTS. Unfortunately, I had two points of failure: Turns out Maylander is not retiring, and this detuned MAMGSGTS was a bit of a disappointment.

Maybe disappointment is an overstatement, more like, I expected more and it just didn’t quite deliver. And you can tell by the fact that I really didn’t have much to say during the video. The whole time I was thinking, “Where is the real MAMG?” The GT S version is listed at 503hp. Honestly, it felt more like high 3’s or maybe just cracking 400. My GT550 plants me in the seat more than this.

Coming onto the main straight, you roll onto the throttle, and the car limps up to speed. So next lap, you punch the throttle, and it’s the same thing. The turbo lag was huge! The disappointment immense. But I’m not sure if this was a detuned safety feature, or if the real MAMG suffers through this as well. Guess I’ll have to go buy one and find out. I actually found one here in L.A. for $94k. Only 25k miles and gray. Great, cause I did not want a black! A black AMG is so L.A.

The car is, as expected, well balanced, but I probably was not going fast enough to really get a proper feel of under/over steer. But at the same time, that back-end did step out ever so slightly on the off-camber turn 5.  Way too soft for a racer. Also, at the end of the straight, you slam on the brakes, and unlike anything I’ve felt in the $150k+ supercar range, I feel the ABS kicking back and squirming under the pressure. With those huge slotted AND cross-drilled rotors, I figured this thing would stop on a dime. But closer inspection reveals a lack of Brembos or even the home grown Mercedes 6-piston calipers. So again, maybe part of the detuning is to not allow the car to stop on a dime, and thereby keeping novice drivers from overstepping their limits.

The interior of the car was quite nice though. All sorts of chrome knobs to turn and switches to flick. Starting the engine, that rumble is beautiful! The sound is something that, now that I think about it, sounds weird. The car is a front engine, but when you start it, the rumble comes through as if its coming from the rear. Maybe some audio piping? Maybe just the acoustics of the cabin. And why not, since it’s a 2-seater. This gives it a racers edge as if its a mid engine. The V8 sound is low and rumbly, contrary to a Ferrari purr or a Nissan scream. It sounds more NASCAR oval racer than F1 road car.

The steering wheel is a plump handful of suede to grip. I was intrigued as to how full uniformed it was, all the way around the hand grips. No thumb bulge to provide that extra leverage. Guess they never had an issue getting this thing around Monaco. The paddle shifters have interesting inscriptions: Up and Down. Well, if you’re paying $200k for a new MAMGGTS and you need inscriptions telling you which way to shift… then inscriptions you shall have. I just thought this the one of the more weird things I saw on the car. But again, maybe this was for the novices at the track. Something Exotics had inscribed for them. Who knows? Let’s head down tomorrow to confirm if this is on the public cars 🙂