The new GT3 RS is so great, we needed to track down a superior approach to measuring its presentation. (Besides, we set a lap standard.)
After our most memorable drive the previous fall of the new 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS on the U.K. 's Silverstone circuit, we said we considered "another measurement for assessing vehicles like this. Without a doubt, the GT3 RS will create strong figures in our conventional testing, from 0-60 and quarter-mile times to slowing down distances to skidpad g's.
Yet, none of those things is what's going on with this race vehicle level of capacity, and they'll not do anything to precisely communicate the truth here." As Porsche GT division supervisor Andy Preuninger told us at that point, "This vehicle, on high velocity corners with a Cup-adults-only road tire, is faster than a 911 Cup race vehicle on slicks. Not in each corner but rather in some rapid corners. For a road lawful vehicle this is a significant, serious assertion."
Why Are We Doing This?
To Preuninger's point, quick cornering is the situation in this brain twisting period of enormous downforce street legitimate execution vehicles, and on the off chance that you're sufficiently fortunate to drive or ride in one at speed on a legitimate circuit, you promptly feel the extraordinary cornering hold and slowing down. Chances are, after a lap or three, you'll get it and at absolutely no point in the future inquiry what's going on with the quarrel.
It's a kind of presentation not caught in straight-line speed increase and slowing down tests, nor is it offered remotely close to at least some respect by estimating parallel g's during MotorTrend's figure-eight course, which doesn't consider speeds sufficiently high to bring a significant part of the hold producing streamlined features into play. Also, in cases when we truly do drive vehicles on undeniable courses, it's one thing to decipher seat-of-the-pants feel to make decrees about "race vehicle levels of ability" and very one more to plunge into genuine information to learn exactly the way that great something like the GT3 RS is contrasted with a real race vehicle.
Our craving to let poetic overstatement go drove us to Street America, the popular and quick 4.048-mile street course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, with a 2023 911 GT3 RS and 2023 911 GT3 Cup race vehicle close by. Bringing two vehicles like this together isn't crafted by a second, and we owe large because of two liberal people who share our inquisitive nature: Chicago-region business chief, Porsche lover, and novice racer Steve Dimakos, proprietor of the GT3 RS utilized in this test, and Jeff Majkrzak, a financial specialist who possesses the GT3 Cup race vehicle and contends as an Am-class driver in the Porsche Select Carrera Cup North America series. Extra much gratitude goes to Goldcrest Motorsports, the Kennesaw, Georgia-based Porsche expert that prepared the vehicles for Street America, assisted us with get-together locally available telemetry information, and runs the vehicle for Majkrzak in the Carrera Cup.
Since this examination requested we push the 911s reliably close as far as possible on a serious enormous kid track, we tapped a blend of involvement and youth to deal with the driving and furnish input to oblige our caught information: Andy Traveler, a numerous title making GT robust and long-term MotorTrend companion with many years of vehicle improvement and testing experience, and Dimitri Dimakos, Steve's child and a Carrera Cup Ace driver who's personally acquainted with the most recent yield of 992-age 911 GT3 Cup hardware.
The Contenders
The 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS is the most track-skilled creation model the organization has at any point fabricated. With its range of static and dynamic streamlined components like its mobile back wing drag-decrease framework (DRS), it produces huge downforce under slowing down and through corners while unloading air drag to in any case pull emphatically on straight areas. Porsche says it makes 895 pounds of downforce at 124 mph and 1,896 at 177.
These are strong numbers for a GT racer and ridiculous ones for a creation vehicle with a beginning cost of $226,950. The all-in value for Dimakos' vehicle is $289,250, with its two major exhibition choices being carbon-earthenware brakes ($9,210) and the Weissach pack, which adds lighter magnesium wheels, among other lightweighting modifications ($33,520).
The 4.0-liter direct-infused level six motor makes 518 hp and 342 lb-ft of force. The vehicle's check weight, as per Porsche, is around 3,240 pounds, and everything rides on tacky Michelin Game Cup 2 R elastic (275/35 20-inchers in front, 335/30 21s toward the rear). Furthermore, it was set up as per Manthey Hustling specs for camber, toe, and ride level — a track arrangement accessible to all GT3 RS proprietors up to a Manthey-supported seller applies the settings.
Porsche claims the 911 GT3 Cup is the world's smash hit race vehicle, and it contends in series like the Porsche Supercup title that fills in as a help occasion to Recipe 1, as well as different Carrera Cup series. With a beginning cost of $269,000 (on the off chance that you choose for buy the electronically monitored slowing mechanisms) in addition to conveyance charges, its variant of the 4.0-liter fighter six makes 510 pinnacle hp and 347 lb-ft of force, shipped off the back tires not by the seven-speed double grasp transmission tracked down in the street vehicle yet by a six-speed-successive canine sort (non-synchronized) paddle-moved Porsche dashing gearbox.
With the erasure of solaces, for example, a front seat, sound-stifling material, full inside, environment control, glass (supplanted with polycarbonate), and entryway cards, it checks in around 2,778 pounds, making it fundamentally lighter than the RS. Its streamlined features are fixed there's no DRS, and Porsche Motorsport will not reveal the downforce figures and it rides on treadless Michelin slicks that are 2.0 inches more extensive than the RS' (12.0 versus 10.0). The two vehicles' back tires measure 13.0 inches wide.
Turn And Burn
To accumulate our information, criticism, and lap times, Dimakos and Traveler made a few runs in every vehicle all through the better piece of a radiant May day that started with temperatures during the 40s (not great for extricating the tires' most extreme potential) before at last moving into the mid-50s (still somewhat flawed however useful). None of the constituents available was altogether certain the way that the result could work out, however everybody expected the 911 GT3 Cup to complete ahead — yet by how much? In the event that the GT3 RS went in close vicinity to five seconds for every lap, we'd think of it as an amazing achievement.
Making things to a greater extent a question mark, Street America had as of late been completely repaved, and the circuit's grasp level was low a direct result of the surface's originality and hence an unmistakable absence of vehicles running and setting down elastic.
No issue for our motivations, as the circumstances were equivalent for both Porsches, yet taking into account the track's condition and every driver's craving to pass on a bit of edge to try not to crash this wasn't a race-end of the week qualifying meeting, all things considered we expected no lap records to fall. Yet, with Dimakos eventually setting the speediest times on new tires toward the day's end, it turned out we were off-base. The information and the drivers needed to say this.