14 Oct 04
But Klaus, who is a great talker, suddenly goes rather coy when I ask him whether it's as quick as an SLR round the track. He shuffles his feet a little, smiles, hesitates and then says, 'I don't know. Perhaps about the same.' And he leaves it at that and me to figure out whether this is an accurate reflection of the facts or a Mercedes employee faithfully toeing the party line. You should bear in mind now that Mercedes reckons an SLR to be about as quick in that environment as a Ferrari Enzo.
To be honest, the SLR should be quicker than the CLK - it's got more power and less weight - but then again it has also to be a comfortable Grand Tourer, something I suspect never got that high up the agenda of those charged with creating the DTM CLK. Now, I don't know how CLK rides on the road, but I do know is that if you'd said to me before I drove it that a 1748kg, front-engined road car could handle a race track like this, I'd have laughed in your face.
Indeed, for all its performance, and the way it bellows up to 160mph is not something I'm going to be forgetting any time soon, it was its approach to Paul Ricard's many tortuous turns that really slackened the jaw. Despite 5.5 litres of supercharged V8 in its snout, it turns in with the alacrity of a mid-engine car, but without the nervousness. Through the devastatingly quick Signes corner, I could watch Ludwig, slithering and sliding his now rather ironically titled Safety Car, while my DTM version sat welded to its intended line.
