Iron Lynx forced to change Mercedes chassis after Grove’s hefty Le Mans practice crash

The Iron Lynx team has been forced to change the chassis on its #63 Mercedes-AMG LMGT3 after a sizeable crash for Stephen Grove in Le Mans 24 Hours opening practice.

It was a tough start to Mercedes’ first Le Mans appearance since 1999 as event rookie Grove was caught out on his first proper push lap and crashed hard into the barriers at the Dunlop Chicane around 75 minutes into the session.

The accident ruled the Mercedes out of Wednesday’s first qualifying and the night-time FP2 session.

The heavy front-end damage meant Iron Lynx needed to change the chassis to the one the team uses in the European Le Mans Series.

All three of the squad’s Le Mans entries were in cars specially created for the blue-riband round of the World Endurance Championship. Mercedes’ head of customer racing Stefan Wendl said that around 80% of the parts were undamaged and could still be used.

“It was a short, heavy impact with a concrete wall unfortunately and the car overall percentage was not so massively damaged but the significant parts of the front beam, of the aluminium chassis was so heavily damaged that we couldn’t repair it here without any tooling kit to align and get it repaired,” he explained.

“So this is what made us change the chassis completely and this is what they’ve done overnight and they’ve done a brilliant job.”

The work has now been completed to enable the #63 car that Grove shares with his son Brenton and factory driver Luca Stolz to return to action in Thursday’s FP3.

Grove Sr admitted that he was caught out by the hot conditions and was guilty of pushing a little too hard.

“As I went to the corner with the same lines, the same amount of throttle, the same lift, I just lost the rear and it just snapped,” he told Autosport.

“As the car was sliding, and because it was my first lap, I hadn’t completely understood the conditions and how far the track was off.

“In hindsight, I probably should’ve brought the lift back a little bit.

“It was in a split second. And that’s the problem with a GT3 car, when they let go, they let go.

#63 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG LMGT3: Stephen Grove, Brenton Grove, Luca Stolz

Photo by: Marc Fleury

“It’s unfortunate, it affects you a little bit mentally, you’ve got to just get back in the car today and build back up and get going.”

There was further strife for the Iron Lynx squad in opening qualifying when Andrew Gilbert in the #60 Mercedes stopped on track at the midpoint of the session, with Wendl revealing that a failure with refuelling equipment meant insufficient fuel had been put into the car.

However, Wendl was buoyed by a Mercedes progressing to Hyperpole for the first time in the 2025 WEC season courtesy of Lin Hodenius in the #61 machine, which was 11th quickest.