Porsche’s GT2 formula, such as it is, was always meant to be the most potent/frightening of all the 911 variants for its time. And with the newly announced 2018 model, there’s was no doubt it was developed to be an absolute beast. It proved just that, recently snatching the record for the fastest production vehicle to lap the 20.6-kilometre Nürburgring Nordschleife.
With a submitted lap time of 6 minutes and 47.3 seconds, it has beaten the previous record holder’s lap by an unbelievable 5 seconds. As a refresher, the car we’re referring to is the Lamborghini Huracan Performante, which back in March announced a time of 6 minutes 52 seconds.
Frank-Steffen Walliser, Vice President Motorsport and GT Cars, said: “At the start of the development process, we set ourselves a lap time target for the GT2 RS of less than 7 minutes and 5 seconds. The credit for beating this target by 17.7 seconds goes to our development engineers, mechanics and drivers, who demonstrated an exceptionally strong team performance. This result makes it official: The GT2 RS is not only the most powerful, but also the fastest 911 ever built”.
The Lambo’s record was beaten on at least two occasions during the GT2 RS’ extended session at the Nurburgring on September 20th, by both driver’s brought to the track for the occasionL Lars Kern from Germany and Nick Tandy from the UK. It was Kern who ultimately set the fastest lap of the day which began at 7.11pm, maintaining an average speed of 184.11km/h.
Andreas Preuninger, Director GT Model Line, says: “It’s not just the record time achieved by the GT2 RS that demonstrates the vehicle’s class, but also its consistent performance in every lap. We’re particularly proud of the fact that this was achieved with two different vehicles and two different drivers, as this underlines the GT2 RS’s ability to reproduce this record result over and over again”.
There’s still the small problem of the McLaren P1 LM, though - a lighter, more aerodynamically advanced version of the track-only P1 GTR made street legal by through modifications by Lanzante Motorsport (LM), which claimed to have set a 6 minute 43.22 second lap time. However, categorising that particular one as a production car be considered a stretch by most as only 5 were made and were exceedingly expensive, even for a 746kW hypercar.
By contrast, the 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS’ 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged flat-six makes it the most powerful factory 911 ever produced, generating 515kW and 750Nm, sent exclusively rearward through a modified version of Porsche’s PDK dual-clutch automatic transmission.
Being an RS, there’s some significant weight reduction at play here, and pretty much carries over many of the same carbon composite and titanium components from the track-ready GT3 RS. Porsche will even the car with the Weissach Pack, lightening the load by another 30kg, though that isn’t enough to alter its 2.8 second 0-100km/h sprint time or its top speed at 340km/h.
All that said, the countdown now starts for the next record breaker to appear, taking the now-triumphant GT2 RS down a notch. Lamborghini’s best effort last them less than half a year, how long will Porsche’s?
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