20/24 #1: 1989 Sauber Mercedes C9 (chassis C9-03)

Chosen by: Sam Smith

Best finish: 1st, 1989

Team: Team Sauber Mercedes

Driven by: Stanley Dickens, Jochen Mass, Manuel Reuter

Some things are meant to be. Red wine and dark chocolate, red wine and steak, red wine and – anyway, you see what I mean. Sauber and Mercedes is one of those combinations. After Mercedes had dipped a toe supporting the Sauber team in 1987, and waded further in ’88, they put on the trunks and goggles and dove headfirst in ’89. What followed was glorious.

“It was formative for me, seeing those cars,” says Sam Smith, writer, multi-decade veteran of sportscar racing, and nominator of the Sauber Mercedes C9. “The C9 was era-defining. I saw it, as an impressionable 13 year old, at Donington Park in 1989, and it was phenomenal between Redgate and the Old Hairpin, I mean, like, properly phenomenal. It was a silver, viscous wonder.”

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