The new Porsche 911 GT3 is the closest thing to a racing car that can be driven on public roads. Be careful what you wish for.
THE WORDS ‘MOTORSPORTS’ AND ‘racing’ are used too casually by so many brands for their road cars that many of us are duped into thinking that we could all be Lewis Hamilton if given the chance to pilot his F1 car. Most of us will never get to drive a proper racing car of course so we may never get to find out if we’re made of The right Stuff or not.
One car that comes as close as you get to experiencing what a real racing machine is like to drive is the Porsche 911 GT3. named after the GT3 racing series, these cars are built by the motorsport division alongside Yuey Tan’s carrera cup racers and the 911 rSr that is raced at Le Mans.
From their very core, the GT3 starts life as a more focused machine than the other 911 variants. Apparently, the car’s weight-saving programme starts from the body-in-white, where reinforcements that would support the rear seat belts for example are omitted and instead there are mounting points designed to accept a roll cage. This is why there is no rear seat option for this two-seater 911.
The latest update of the 911 GT3 codenamed 991.2 is essentially to be more relevant with the latest GT3 cup racing cars. on several occasions throughout the launch, Porsche’s representatives went through lengths to emphasise that the new 4.0-litre flat-six in the GT3 is now exactly the same as the power units of the GT3 cup cars. In the road-going application, the engine is tuned to make 500hp and revs to 9,000rpm – the highest revving street legal production Porsche engine ever.
This story is from the Vol 77 - July-August 2017 edition of evo Singapore.
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This story is from the Vol 77 - July-August 2017 edition of evo Singapore.
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