Porsche 911 GT3 RS review

No, what turns this into an RS like no other is the aerodynamics. Limited by the desire to retain natural engine aspiration and what can be extracted from the flat-six by these means under existing emissions legislation, it was never likely to be much more powerful. And the bigger body, wider tyres, thicker brakes and so on always made huge weight savings doubtful. Indeed Porsche has had to fit CFRP doors for the first time to help manage the weight gain. Which really left aero as the one big remaining development area. So, to be blunt, they went nuts.

To see just what lengths were deemed necessary, one of the most important things to understand about this car is that it only has one radiator instead of the usual three. It may not sound like a big deal, but it’s enormous, and for reasons both bad and good. The problem is that the new radiator is obviously rather bigger than previously and is centrally mounted at an angle of 43 degrees. With its associated plumbing and trunking to the hot air vents in the bonnet, that meant there was no room in the nose for any luggage.

Remember that deep storage area that made all 911s such practical long distance machines? All gone. Unless you particularly want to examine some fans, there is no point at all in ever opening the bonnet. So if you have a passenger, the only place to put anything is behind the seats, and if you have a roll cage fitted, even that’s going to be pretty difficult.

So why have they done it? Because it frees up space either side of the radiator where active flaps under the car have been fitted which increase front downforce by, wait for it, 80 per cent. And that’s just the start. Look at those strange bonnet vents: they exist to direct the exiting air along the sides of the car and, to stop it the looping back into the engine intake (because that’s the last place you want hot ‘dirty’ air), there are curved strips on the roof to impede that process.

New and substantial cut outs behind both front and rear wheels help air flow while, and for the first time, a 911 GT3 RS comes with a fully panelled underside directing air to a rear diffuser, which is responsible for generating 10 per cent of total downforce. Even the front suspension wishbones have been aerodynamically profiled so that they alone add 40kg of additional downforce at top speed.

And then there’s that rear wing, 40 per cent larger in surface area than that of the GT3 and with full DRS, which can be actuated either manually or automatically. Those are just the highlights, but provide some insight into just how hard Porsche has tried.

And these are the results. Fully trimmed out, in minimum downforce specification, it has more downforce than the GT3. In maximum attack mode it has substantially more downforce than Porsche’s own GT3 Cup racing car. Indeed its downforce in high speed corners, up to 860kg split 600/260 rear to front, is equivalent to Porsche’s RSR racer in Le Mans configuration. Which is why on street tyres, this road car has a higher apex speed in a quick corner than the aforementioned Cup car on purpose-built slicks. Which, when you think about it, really is quite something.

But that’s not the only reason it’s sitting on the flailing GT3’s exhausts like a cat with its paw on a mouse’s tail. Because it has also been set up for these conditions like no other 911 could be. We are very used to GT3s having highly adjustable suspension and wing angles, but these all need time and spanners.

No longer: from the comfort of the cockpit you can now choose one of seven settings for the traction and stability control. You can adjust both the compression and rebound of the dampers from the steering wheel (in their softest setting the ride is better than in default comfort mode) and even set up the differential for entry to and exit from the corners. However, today is so short there’s simply no time to experiment, so I have to adopt the settings of one of the Porsche professional race drivers. Mine was called Mark Webber…

And now you can perhaps appreciate why the GT3 RS, with all that aero and a chassis minutely finessed for the conditions, can sit on the tail of a professionally driven GT3 with a close to identical power-to-weight ratio with no apparent effort at all.

But what does it feel like? Extraordinary, really. The only really big barrier is psychological, insofar as your head thinks it has an idea of what a GT3 RS on Cup 2 rubber is going to be like, and then discovers it’s not like that at all.

Because it does that thing that only downforce can do. It is famous for providing more grip in fast corners and it certainly does, but its less well known but equally welcome property is it just settles the car down. You can swoop through really fast corners like Copse and the curve after the pit straight and it just feels nailed to the track. When grip finally starts to go, instead of snatching and twitching like the GT3, it just slides gently and securely. And that’s the most important point: it’s not just faster, it’s much easier too.

All of which before I even mention the effect on the brakes. I didn’t look to see what we were pulling down the Hangar Straight but it was probably 150mph or more, at which speed there’s so much downforce mashing the car into the track you can brake almost as hard as you would in a normal car in the dry. Of course you can’t stay on the brakes for long because the downforce washes away very quickly as the speed drops, but it’s easier than it sounds to bleed off the brake pressure as you decelerate.

Of course its ultimate pace remains unknown and both Porsche and the assembled journalists were left bitterly frustrated not to be able to drive the car on a dry track. Even when they attempted a Nürburgring lap, the weather got in the way. But I asked Andy Preuninger, universally known as ‘Mr GT3’, what his simulations suggested and at first he batted away the question by saying he didn’t trust simulations because they were almost always wrong.

So I asked him instead how close it might get to the 6min 47sec lap set by the GT2 RS in 2018, bearing in mind its turbocharged stablemate had a mighty 173bhp power advantage. ‘Well that is the target,’ said Preuninger as my eyes gaped at the suggestion. ‘We don’t know if we will get there, but I expect it will be close.’

If there’s any kind of question mark left over this car, it’s whether it can be, for all its additional pace, not just the fastest GT3 RS in history by a mile, but the most fun too. And I wonder about that. I’m on record as saying I think the GT4 RS is more fun than a GT3 and the fact that both of these cars have more accessible levels of performance may count in their favour.

But actually I think it’s a more cerebral kind of fun. Though I am sure it will do, and be seen to do, all those big burnout drifts beloved of car fans, it’s not really that kind of car. It’s a car in which to sit, think hard about the conditions, how you’re planning on driving and then optimising it for the environment shortly before going out on track and making absolute mincemeat of everything else out there. And believe me, wet or dry, there’s going to be very little indeed that’s entitled to wear a numberplate that will see which way the new GT3 RS goes.

Which really leaves just one remaining question: what would a new GT2 RS with the aero of the GT3 RS be like? It’s actually quite hard to imagine. Even if they just kept the old 691bhp engine, with some further development, the car would surely obliterate the 6min 39sec lap set by the GT2 RS with the full Manthey Racing upgrade packed. Six and a half minutes? I genuinely think it’s possible. If so, that would have placed it third on the grid for the last World Sportscar Championship 1000kms race held on the Nürburgring, faster than all the Group C Porsche 956s save the two entered by the factory.

And that would be something to see. But we may not. That there will be no ‘gen 1’ GT2 RS will hardly be surprising, for nor was there for the 997 and 991 generations. But even the ‘gen 2’ is far from certain. ‘We are just starting to think about it,’ says Andy, ‘but much depends on when the next round of emissions legislation is going to hit. As things stand right now the car would have to be less powerful than the last one, and that’s not very exciting.’

If there is a way, have no doubt that Preuninger and his team will find it. For now however just rejoice that this GT3 RS is the biggest single leap any RS has taken over its predecessor. So why is it not only our second ten out of ten rated car? I think the sacrifice of all luggage space at the altar of aero is a step too far, and also I need to drive it a lot more, in the dry and on the road. It is an opportunity I look forward to very much.