The Sauber Mercedes-Benz C11 was a Group C prototype race car introduced in 1989/90 for the World Sportscar Championship. Built by Sauber as a successor to the Sauber C9, the C11 used the same Mercedes-Benz M119 5.0L Turbocharged V8 from the C9. The C11 was the first time that Mercedes-Benz chose to put their name on the car, instead of simply using Sauber.
Debuting in the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season, the C11 won all but one race and easily took the team's championship for the year. Although Sauber-Mercedes had been successful in winning the 1989 24 Hours of Le Mans, the team choose not to defend the title in 1990 due to the race not being part of the World Sportscar Championship schedule. The team chose instead to concentrate on winning the championship.
Although the C11 was to be replaced by the Mercedes-Benz C291 for the 1991 World Sportscar Championship season, problems with the C291's new engine led Mercedes-Benz to continue to campaign the C11 alongside the C291. The C11 was able to gain three more class wins in the 1991 season before the C291 fully replaced it. It should be noted that the reason that Sauber skipped from C9 to C11 is due to the difficult pronunciation of C10 in German, with C and 10 being pronounced nearly identically.
| Years of activity: | 1989-1990-1991 |
| Number of races: | 13 |
| Finishing ratio: | 85% |
| Wins: | 7 |
| Seconds: | 5 |
| Thirds: | 1 |
| Poles: | 7 |
| Most frequent drivers: | Jochen Mass (18) Jean-Louis Schlesser (16) Mauro Baldi (12) Michael Schumacher (8) Karl Wendlinger (4) Fritz Kreutzpointner (2) Heinz-Harald Frentzen (2) Alain Ferté (2) Stanley Dickens (2) Kurt Thiim (2) Jonathan Palmer (1) |
Chassis number C11-89-00 was built towards the end of the 1989 Group C season by Team Sauber and was the first Leo Ress designed C11 to be built and the first Sauber built car to be allowed to use the Mercedes-Benz name.
It transpired that the FIA changed the Group C regulations in the later part of 1989 and so rather than modify this chassis, Sauber decided to use it as the prototype C11 test car as they had planned to build a test car anyway.
Five further C11 race cars were subsequently built.C11-89-00 was used at 10 tests with all the official factory drivers driving it at some point,
Mario Baldi 6 times,
Michael Schumacher 5 times,
Jochen Mass 5 times,
Jean Louis Schlesser 5 times,
Heinz H. Frentzen 2 times,
Karl Wendlinger 2 times.Although 89-00 was never raced, all the major development work on aerodynamics and general chassis set up for the C11 programme was carried out with this car.
Below is a letter from Peter Sauber detailing the list of tests that took place. PDF's are available containing extra information for some of the tests.
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