Porsche 911 GT3 RS 992 – The Track Weapon – Full Details

Long wait is over. I'm very happy and proud to be able to present the most track orientated GT car we ever developed to date. The new GT3 RS. One thing when you first look at the car is very obvious. It's all about aerodynamics. It looks very much like a race car and it has aerodynamic values, downforce values that are double as much as we had from the predecessor. That means at 285 kilometers per hour there's 860 kilos of downforce on the car. And even at 200 kilometers per hour we have 410 kilograms. That is a lot and that helps a lot on cornering speeds, especially in high speed corners. And how did we achieve that? Active aerodynamics. A huge rear spoiler, six feet wide, higher up in cleaner air than ever before. And two modules hidden beneath the front lamps that have active diffusers that work in synchronicity with the rear flap that goes up and down to get maximum performance on track. This car does not only feature a lot of aerodynamic components that we use in the GT3 RS car. We even stole a feature from Formula One, which is a drag reduction system that the pilot can activate via a button on the steering wheel to reduce drag and give the car the best performance out of the corners on the longer straights. Everything on the car has a function. If we start with these nostrils here on the front hood, they're there to guide the air that exits from the radiator, which is hot, to the sides of the car, to both sides of the car and keep the air outward of the center section where the intake system of the car is located. The cooler the air, the more oxygen we have, the more power the car can produce. And we're doing this by these nostrils and these fins here on top of the roof, which have a slightly curved geometry to guide the airflow away from the center section. This radical aerodynamic concept is not only in the middle section of the car, it's on both sides of the car as well. The air stream enters here and it's not a radiator anymore like on the predecessor. There is a module hidden beneath the headlamps that is electronically operated with two diffusers. So, we guide the air through these diffusers, guide it on through the control arms and all the suspension parts here, which are shaped aerodynamically. So, we have a profile on each control arm here that contributes to the downforce of the car big time. We have another 40 kilos of additional downforce solely by using these aerodynamically shaped control arms. If the air goes on, it gets ventilated through these veins up above, which we know from the predecessor, which work a little bit more efficient even. And we use this section here, which is a little bit drawn to the inside to exhale the air a little bit better out of the wheel wells. And for that, we had to construct a new door that is made of carbon fiber. These veins here guide the air close to the body to prevent swells that are causing back pressure. We don't want to have that. And then guide the air here through the side of the car into these intakes here, which are not used anymore for intake charge of the car, which are part of the aerodynamic concept to accelerate the air, guiding the air mostly and as flat as possible to the side of the car by using these veins here. And that's not everything. There's a lot of air entering in the front, underneath the front splitter. The whole under construction of the car is full of veins and guiding flappers to get the best aerodynamical results. A lot of speculation was going on, what kind of engine would be in this car? It's a four-liter flat six, six-cylinder engine, normally aspirated. It has 525 horsepower, so that's 15 more than on a GT3. How did we do that? Different camshafts, different setup, and the camshaft has higher overlap, creating more ferocity and revving up dynamics, more power at high RPMs, which is a 9,000 RPM red line. And made it to this fire-breathing engine is a PDK gearbox, quite typical for an RS variant, because it's really quicker on the track. And this gearbox has a shorter final drive, if you compare it to the GT3's unit, to compensate the bigger wheels. 335 section tires, wider track, all ball-jointed multi-link rear axle, the newest generation of race dampers in this car. And this is neatly mated to the front end of the car, which has a 275 tire, a wider track than on the GT3 by 29 millimeters, and whole bespoke new wheel guiding components, like the control arms or the wheel knuckles. We have a deeper pivot point here, so that gives us kind of an anti-dive system to the car that enables us to keep the car always at the same pitch, including under very hard braking, though that means that the distribution between the front downforce and the rear downforce on the car always stays the same, and the car is very controllable, because there's no shift in downforce on the car. This car here has a 410 millimeter PCCB brake system, which we know from the predecessor and which is superb on the track and on the street as standard equipment. The car comes with a steel rotor, which is revised and enhanced over the ones we use in the GT3. The steel rotors are thicker to create more longevity on the track, and the rear calipers on this car have a different piston diameter to get even more stopping power from the super wide rear to create the best stopping times and stopping distances I think we ever had on any street car in Porsche. On the quest for maximum brake performance, we have aerodynamical aid here as well, because we can influence this rear wing, which folds up as an active airbrake, so we create more wind resistance to the car under hard braking, which even decreases the stopping times and makes stopping distances a lot shorter. There's another trick we have up the sleeve. We can control compression and rebound of the dampers in the car. The driver can do it himself. It's really very neat. You don't have to go underneath the car and play around with damper settings there. You can do it from the cockpit. We have the satellites here on the steering wheel where we can influence compression and rebound for front and rear axle. By turning the knobs, which are mirroring the same position than the satellites here, you can adjust rebound more or less front and rear and can create your own individual setup. But the PASM system, the damper control, is not all you can do here. There's another button here that says ESC TC. That's a traction control. By pushing that button, you get another screen and you can adjust the traction control to your liking and you can even turn it completely off. Another thing you can control here is the electronic rear differential. You can influence the values for coast and power to your liking. Very good if you have damp conditions or if you have a bumpier road and you can influence the car's behavior upon braking and exiting the curve by a big time here. There will be a Weissach package as well available for the car. Traditionally, the Weissach package shows off more carbon fiber than this non-Weissach variant here. That means the front lid is visible carbon fiber, the roof is visible carbon fiber and for most markets, we offer a rear roll cage made of carbon fiber as well, which is in itself six kilos lighter than the steel variant. Another goodie here for the Weissach package is you can order the car with magnesium forged wheels as well, which shave off another eight kilos of the car's overall weight, which in its lowest spec is 1,450 kilograms, which is quite a low figure for a car like that, for the size of the car and for all the technology involved. So that rounds it off. I think we have the most hardcore GT variant to date standing here behind me and there's so much technology and innovation going on, not only to make the car faster, to make it more fun to drive as well. I love to drive it, especially in the high-speed corners on every given track. It's mind-boggling what this car can do. It's so much fun and I really love to drive it and I'm absolutely sure you will love it too.