It matters less and less how frantically the wipers swish the downpour away from the windshield of this brand new Mercedes, the AMG GT R Pro; the wheel spray from the car in front forms a cloud of grey so deep, visibility is little more than a fond memory from a sunnier past. With 20 degrees of leftward steering dialed in, I follow the spray cloud and keep my right foot buried. Steering, at moments, gets light, but the car never leaves my intended path. Moments later, the speedometer flashes past 150 mph. Brakes!
ABS pumping hard, the rear of the AMG GT R Pro stays stable as I veer to the inside of the track, looking for grip like a millennial looking for a lost smartphone. I turn in to a hairpin right corner that requires a breath for the front to hook-up and then massive patience to slowly, carefully feed 577 hp through two rear wheels wearing rubber much happier in the warm and dry. Did I mention it was 45 degrees outside? It takes a ten-count to get to full throttle without spinning the wheels to infinity. And I’m off to another right corner, this one with a 100-mph entry speed, in the wet.
Welcome to a rainy day at the Hockenheimring, a racetrack on the Formula 1 calendar about an hour outside of Stuttgart, Germany. It's a track with a marvelous combination of slow, medium and high-speed corners and a pretty darn long, but not at all straight, back straight — a place where it requires all that effort, and a proactive resistance to fear, simply to avoid losing the aforementioned car in front, driven by none other than Mr. DTM himself, Bernd Schneider.
The former F1 driver is better known for his five championships in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters and countless wins in Mercedes race cars. And the new trim level of the AMG GT we pilot today has more power than a DTM car. AMG added Pro to the name because it takes one step closer to walking the walk of a race car.
But first, all 2020 AMG GT models feature a few changes of note. Cosmetically, each trim level of GT gets its own custom exhaust tips. And the GT now has LED head and taillights, a redesigned rear diffuser (that’s mostly for show) and new wheels. Inside there’s a new steering wheel design with added buttons, a 12.3-inch screen to function as an instrument panel and a 10.25-inch screen to handle audio, navigation, Apple Car Play, Android Auto and other common premium car duties.
The lower center console contains the usual shifter and central control for the aforementioned screen. And now eight “display buttons”, four on either side, each with its own screen displays the setting of said controls. Volume, for example, shows a red bar to indicate the level right there. That joins drive mode, trans (drive or manual), dampers, stability control, auto stop/start, rear wing up or down, and exhaust loudness.
Taking cues from the recently released GT four-door, all GTs now have AMG Dynamics to play with, an integrated driving control system that uses available sensors to detect speed, steering angle, yaw rate. AMG Dynamics manipulates how rear-axle-steering, torque vectoring by brake and the electronically controlled limited-slip differential operate. It has four settings: Basic, Advanced, Pro, and Master. These four settings are tied to drive modes called AMG Dynamic Select. Basic is part of slippery and comfort. Advanced comes on in Sport. Pro is part of Sport +. And Master is only available on GT C and GT R in Race mode and only with stability control off.
Finally, there’s AMG Track Pace, a “virtual race engineer” data recorder. Track Pace collects data at 10hz and records 80 vehicle specific data points as well as lap and sector times. It’s also color coordinated: green or red to indicate faster or slower. Track Pace uses GPS data and sensors from the car (accelerometers, gyroscope, steering angle, wheels speeds) to give the driver a detailed understanding of the lap. And some well-known tracks are already stored in the system.
A day at the track brings us back to the AMG GT R Pro. The Affalterbach-based Mercedes sub-brand started with an already bonkers GT R and added more technology, carbon fiber, downforce and adjustability.
The Pro edges toward the Jaguar XE Project 8 in terms of track day readiness; you could argue it goes further. In fact, I’m about to make that argument. The front suspension uses metal Uniball bearings instead of bushings on the lower control arm, as does the GT R. In back, however, both the upper and lower control arms use Uniball bearings on the Pro, taking away any remaining slack in precision. On the underside of the chassis, AMG added a third carbon fiber shear-plate to the floor (the GT R already has two), to increase torsional rigidity by 7.5 percent. Sticking with carbon fiber, the Pro’s front anti-roll bar is made from it and is two-way adjustable. Not press-a-button adjustable, but get out of the car, lift it up and get your wrenches kind of adjustable. The rear bar adjusts too but is made from steel.
With the car on jacks, you might as well fiddle with the shock absorbers because, yup, they’re adjustable. With a simple radial button, you can add or remove compression stiffness. Furthermore, there are two separate settings for high and low speed movements, meaning you can tune more suppleness for bumpy sections and stiffness for the smooth fast sweeper. At the top of the shock you can adjust rebound too. Vehicle dynamics engineers will love that, as they will the ability to change ride height, which these dampers also allow. Though the spring rate is the same as the GT R, the adjustable dampers are nominally almost 50 percent stiffer.
Still not done with carbon fiber, AMG added a metal strut mounted front splitter that wraps around the front fenders to function as front winglets on either side. They then added two more front winglets, one on each side, a few inches higher. On top of those same fenders are louvres to avoid trapping air in the wheel wells and causing a high-pressure zone. Behind the rear wheels are two vertical slots to act as air channels and assist the diffuser in back. And on top of the trunk is an adjustable rear wing. All this combines to 220 pounds more downforce than a GT R at 155 mph. How much downforce does a GT R have? AMG wouldn’t tell us, but almost certainly not much. I speculate between 300-400 pounds of total downforce at 155 mph.
Inside is equal parts cool and frustrating. Cool because the seat is manually adjustable, making it lighter, and carbon fiber, making it lighter still. The belts are 4-points to hold passengers in place nice and tight. And a steel roll cage that adds both visual and actual toughness. Frustrating because it’s called the track package and not available in the U.S. because it’s not safe enough, of course. Oh, NHTSA, you used to be cool, man.
On the tech side, the Pro uses dynamic engine mounts, two for the engine and two for the transaxle. They work like magna ride shocks, using fluid with metallic flakes and an electro magnet to change viscosity. This stiffens up the powertrain for track use without shaking passengers to pieces on the road.
Capping off differences are standard ceramic brakes with same size rotors and calipers but different brake pads to better handle the heat from a track day. The wheels are lightweight forged aluminum wrapped in 275/35 R19 tires in front and 325/30 ZR20 in back. You choose from three tires: Pirelli P Zeros, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2’s and a special Cup 2 track tire, developed for the Pro. Choose the track tire.
Aside from all that, it’s just a regular old, run-of-the-mill, GT R. Made from an all-aluminum space frame and equipped with a monster 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 peaking at 577 hp at 6,250 rpm and 516 pound-feet of torque between 2,100 – 5,500 rpm. Equipped with a seven-speed, dual-clutch transaxle, an electronically controlled limited-slip differential and rear-axle steering. You know, the basics.
The Execution
Being such a track-focused car, it’s fitting that my only drive opportunity came at the track. Before we set off, Schneider told me it’s much better to lap a sopping wet Hockenheimring these days, after the owners shortened it and drastically increased its safety standards, than the old days because, “there were trees lining either side of the straight, and the water spray never went away.” I suppose that’s good because, even though I can’t see anything, before it I would have seen, uh, less than nothing. Clearly, track conditions kept me from truly leaning on the Pro. Regardless, the character of the car revealed itself.
Just as the GT R, the Pro is quite sensitive and reactionary to inputs, especially throttle. Like a tightly wound spring, you feel the difference from the tiniest addition of power. Even in automatic mode, the transmission is always in the right gear and the diff keeps power distributed evenly. If your foot is at all heavy, the rear tires will spin, and the car will start to do the same. The rain only exacerbates all this. Thankfully, AMG installed sharp steering with a fast rack so keeping the Pro pointed straight takes little effort. Calibrate your foot, however: Slow it down, and the Pro dances around the limit brilliantly, even in the rain.
With a trained foot, the opportunity to explore what 577 hp feels like presents itself on both the main and longer back straight. Feels good! Even with my walking-on-eggshells approach to adding power, I clipped 152 mph before having to whoa things down. The brakes work great, by the way — always solid pedal feel, good initial bite, zero waver in performance. But, because it’s also cold and rainy, the brakes were not exactly exercised intensely.
Weather also influences my decision to keep stability control on…that and several nervous Germans basically pleading for no one, even Mr. DTM, to turn it off, which presented an opportunity to better understand AMG Dynamics. Not including all the aforementioned mechanical adjustments, AMG allows you to adjust engine character, manual or automatic transmission, loud or less loud exhaust, dampers, stability control and the new AMG Dynamics.
And while that sounds like a lot, the drive mode selector, AMG dynamic select, wraps them all in a bow. Each drive mode blends engine, damper, exhaust, and AMG Dynamic settings to their appropriate place and the car behaves as you’d expect. As you get to know the car and suss out your personal tastes, start to program the individual setting to suit. What at first feels daunting is actually easy. Yes, there is a lot to learn here, but no, there isn’t a pop quiz and the car will not explode, or disappoint, until you pick it all up. At the Hockenheimring, I played a bit, but found Sport + driving mode suited the circumstances perfectly.
Because Germany is not the U.S., these Pros were equipped with the track package, and the carbon fiber seat and four-point belts give your butt a safe and secure place to sink into. I personally loved the manual adjustment, and with a tilting and telescoping steering wheel it was easy to get things exactly how I like it. That was true of the drive mode as well, as a button on the steering wheel controls that setting.
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