Are Nürburgring lap times strictly relevant to how good a car is? Of course not. Do we still lap it up every time a manufacturer proudly announces they’ve set a new record around the 12.94-mile Nordschleife layout? You’re darn right we do, and here’s one from a company that’s no stranger to ’Ring records: the 992.2 Porsche 911 GT3 has broken the record for cars with manual gearboxes.
Not only broken – with its 6min 56.294sec lap, it’s knocked over 9.5 seconds off the previous record holder, which Porsche only calls “a competitor with a significantly more powerful engine,” but which it doesn’t take much Googling to reveal is the last Dodge Viper ACR.
Porsche 911 GT3 manual gearbox
There is a bit of jiggery-pokery here – the Viper’s official time of 7min 1.3sec was set on the slightly shorter 20.6km lap that uses the pit exit as the starting point and the pit entry as the finish. Porsche’s time was set on a complete 20.8km loop, and so it extrapolated the Viper’s run to 7min 05.8sec to get that 9.5 second figure.
Either way, the GT3 did 20.8km faster than the Viper did 20.6km, no mean feat when its 4.0-litre 503bhp flat-six has less than half the displacement and makes 142bhp less than the Viper’s mighty 8.4-litre V10. It makes a heck of a lot less downforce, too. Perhaps more relevantly, the new manual GT3’s lap was 3.633 seconds faster than the pre-facelift 992.1 GT3 managed with the quicker-shifting PDK gearbox.
Porsche 911 GT3 at the Nürburgring – rear
The car used for the record run was fitted with the Weissach package, which introduces a smattering of carbon fibre to the car and gets rid of a couple of non-essential interior bits to shave around 20kg off its kerb weight. It was also running on road legal, but very track-biased, Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tyres.
Installed behind the wheel was Porsche’s usual Nürburgring hotshot of choice, Jörg Bergmeister. He had this to say:
“We learned a lot from the 911 GT3 RS, especially with the chassis. The car is much more stable on bumps and over the curbs. And thanks to the eight-per-cent-short22er gear ratio, there is noticeably more drive from the rear axle when accelerating with the same engine power. Even if it would have been a few seconds faster with the seven-speed PDK – with the six-speed manual gearbox I definitely had more to do on the fast lap – and it was therefore even more fun.”
Porsche 911 GT3 Nürburgring time
It’s some departure from a decade or so ago, when the manual looked like it was about to die in the GT3 altogether, before the 991 facelift saved it. Emissions rules mean it may well disappear again when the next all-new 911 eventually rolls around – if that does happen, then this feels like an appropriate send off.
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