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Mercedes celebrates with World Championship edition SL63

Mercedes has plenty to be celebrating at the moment, having just won the Formula One World Championship in spectacular style – taking the constructors' title by a huge margin and the top two slots in the drivers' standings as well. It almost goes without saying that the German outfit would celebrate with a special edition, and that's just what we're looking at here. Presented at a special celebratory Stars & Cars event in Stuttgart in front of 50,000 jubilant fans, the Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG World Championship 2014 Collector's Edition is based on Benz's twin-turbo V8-powered roadster but with some choice upgrades. Two versions will be offered: one in black with gold accents (displayed with the Silverstone circuit layout), the other in white with silver accents (and the Hockenheim map). One was designed by Lewis Hamilton, the other by Nico Rosberg. We'll let you sort out which one was done by which, but either way there'll only be 19 examples, each dedicated to a different grand prix circuit in the championship which Mercedes positively dominated – winning all but three, scoring eleven one-two finishes and landing on the podium at each and every one.

2015 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG Coupe

Conventional wisdom would dictate that adding more power and several key performance enhancements to an already very good car, like the 2015 Mercedes-Benz S550 Coupe, will end up equaling an even better car. In the case of the 2015 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG Coupe, conventional wisdom sort of applies, but perhaps not as much as we'd have initially guessed. We'll get into the nitty gritty details in just a moment, but here's the most immediate takeaway we had in our minds as we walked away from this super coupe: The S63 AMG is excellent, but so is the slightly more mundane S550 Coupe on which it is based, and which is priced some $41,000 less expensive than its more powerful sibling. Chew on those figures while we examine what differentiates the two S-Class Coupes. Drive Notes As expected, the single greatest highlight of the 2015 S63 Coupe is its engine. As a powerplant, it's a gem. As a hand-built engineering exercise, its 577 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque are just as impressive in real life as they sound when recited from stat sheets. Not that the old CL63 AMG was lacking in power, but the new S63 AMG Coupe boasts 41 more horses and 74 more lb-ft than the outgoing engine. The run to 60 miles per hour takes a scant 3.9 seconds, according to M-B, aided in no small part by the car's 4Matic all-wheel-drive system and other assorted electronic brains deciding where, exactly, all those ponies should be sent. The rear-biased system is tuned to send two-thirds of the engine's power to the rear wheels in a bid to make the car feel more like what performance-minded drivers expect. Top speed is electronically limited to 186 miles per hour, which is plenty fast enough, even in the days of 200-plus-mph sedans from M-B's former corporate cousin Dodge. We didn't get anywhere near the car's maximum velocity, but our brief trips into triple-digit territory were quiet, comfortable and completely free of drama. The seven-speed automatic gearbox responds quickly to requests of your right foot, but the steering wheel-mounted paddles don't change gears as quickly as we'd like when in Manual mode. Controlled Efficiency (which we'd call Comfort) maximizes efficiency, keeping the transmission in higher gears and shifting earlier than when in Sport mode, and we didn't find much fault with the computer's shifting algorithms in either setting.

2016 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix recap: another wild show on and off track

Normally we use this space to provide a lengthy recap of the weekend's Formula 1 race, but we're going to try something different since most folks reading this know what happened at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday. Instead, we'll alight on what we saw as the big issues in and around the race. Let us know what you think in Comments. Proper qualifying is back. Thank goodness. It only took a month of embarrassment to fix it. And so is passing! For the third race in a row, big performance improvements at the ten teams behind Mercedes-AMG Petronas and a wider tire selection at this race graced us with opening stints filled with dicing cars. Seeing the McLarens on screen doesn't make us cringe. Manor doesn't only make the global feed when it's being lapped. We've been complaining about parade races for so long that we forgot excitement was possible without rain or wholesale regulation changes. Yes, Mercedes is still the king of the jungle, but there are some other proper midfield beasts on the hunt, too. Malfunctions up and down the grid did help the show in Shanghai, like Lewis Hamilton suffering perpetual troubles, Nico Hulkenberg's runaway front wheel which red-flagged Q2, and Sebastian Vettel's and Kimi Raikkonen's flubbed hot laps in Q3 that let Daniel Ricciardo slip by into second on the grid. Come race day things went all Grand Theft Auto at Turn 1 on the opening lap, sending some of the best cars to the pits. Then came Ricciardo's puncture while leading, then came the Safety Car – all by Lap 5. Nico Rosberg got 38 seconds of airtime on the way to victory – at the start and the finish, and that happened to be his margin of victory, too – otherwise he was a ghost. Everyone else was struggling and juggling. Rosberg's win at the Bahrain Grand Prix put the German at five consecutive victories going back to last year's Mexican Grand Prix. The history books show that any driver who's won five straight contests has gone on to win the championship. With his triumph in China, the German has won the season's first three races, the history books again show that the other nine drivers who've pulled that off have gone on to win the championship. Rosberg, 36 points ahead of his teammate in the standings, is having none of it. He said of the other victors, "But they didn't have Lewis Hamilton as their team-mate." Perhaps Mercedes was right not to make an engine deal with Red Bull last season.