As the 911 type 991 generation is winding to an end and stepping down for a new generation to continue the legacy, Porsche is keen on displaying all that the 991 generation can achieve. Who can blame them, when every car they release under the GT name seems to heighten the benchmark once again? This time, another record crumbles at the feet of a 911 – the latest 911 GT3 RS is the culprit. Despite having only recently made headlines with the vastly powerful GT2 RS that broke lap records and dropped jaws, Porsche makes bending benchmarks and breaking records look easy.
This week, a road legal 911 GT3 RS set a lap time of 6:56.4 minutes with the 520-hp race-bread Porsche at the Nürburgring-Nordschleife circuit. This makes the GT3 RS the third quickest road car to ever lap the Nordschleife, right behind the Lamborghini Huracan Performante and the 911 GT2 RS. Although the GT3 RS may not have broken the track record, some perspective into the story quickly reveals how spectacular this new lap time truly is. The lap time is a whopping 24 seconds quicker than the previous GT3 RS and over 16 seconds quicker than the new GT3. That is some serious time improvement that surely took some major power increases? Leave it up to Porsche to wrench every bit of performance out of a ‘small’ engine: the new GT3 RS only has 20 more horsepower than its predecessor. Most of the time advantage will have come from significant chassis upgrades, including much stiffer springs, and new solid mountings on both the front and rear subframes. The optional Weissach package is likely to improve its performance evermore with additional carbon fiber and stunning magnesium wheels. The tires used were the road-legal Pilot Sport Cup 2 R – optimized especially for track use, the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R is fully compliant with EU and US road-tire requirements.
Andreas Preuninger, Director GT Model Line, commented; “All four lap times of both drivers were below seven minutes and only tenths of a second apart. This proves not only the outstanding power of the GT3 RS, but also its extraordinary driveability at the limit. A perfectly composed overall system allows for highly dynamic performance even with a relatively modest engine power. For a driver, each of the car’s thousands of parts have to feel like one – that’s an unbeatable strength of the GT3 RS.”
[embedded content]The 911 GT3 RS has a 520 horsepower, four-litre, high- speed naturally aspirated engine had its world premiere at the Geneva Motor Show in early March this year. The car accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.2 seconds, reaching a top speed of 312 km/h. Although it was never thought to run a sub-7 minute time at the ring, it’s performance only highlights the spectacularism.