In charge of the development was HWA, the racing arm of Mercedes’ AMG division. The rules that year at Le Mans required no homologated road cars to be built for a racing car to qualify in the top class, so the CLR was developed as a full-on rocketship with no regard to street legality, except the usual (headlights, windshield wipers, etc). The CLR was an all-new car sporting a 5.7-liter normally aspirated V-8 that came from the S, SL, and E-Class street cars, only tuned up to bang out over 600 horses, which was kickass power for a car weighing only 2000 pounds. It’s a configuration that proved wildly and dangerously unstable. The ultra low-slung CLR rode on a relatively short wheelbase with long overhangs front and rear. Total Mercedes sales would spike over 26 percent that year in Europe and almost 40 percent in the United States. The economy was in the fast lane, and sales of Mercedes E-Class and C-Class road cars were soaring all over the globe. The Stuttgart marque was finishing a year of total dominance in FIA GT1 competition in the fall of ’98, winning every race of the season, against stiff competition from a Porsche factory team. “All the drivers wanted to go to Mercedes,” recalls the 1993 Le Mans champ, Christophe Bouchut, who was on the 1999 team with Dumbreck. Not only did Dumbreck sign a pro contract, it was with Mercedes.

Literally, I was becoming a professional driver from one who was trying to fight for money to race. “It was my first proper income from motorsport. “I got the chance to be with a factory squad,” Dumbreck remembers, from his home in England. Norbert Haug, the powerful head of Mercedes racing, was on the line asking the 25-year old Scotsman to come to Germany. In fall 1998, right before the Macau Grand Prix (which Dumbreck would win), the call he had been dreaming of finally came through. He was in Tokyo, where he was competing in Japanese Formula 3 and winning everything. Frédéric Le Floc’h/DPPI Peter Dumbreck would never forget that phone call.

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