On the 20.6-kilometre Nürburgring Nordschleife track in Stuttgart, Porsche set a new speed record for road-approved sports cars using the Porsche 911 GT2 RS. The new speed record was set at 6 minutes and 47.3 seconds.
The car and the team went down to the track with high hopes already. In fact, they had a notary with them, which is a good thing to do if you’re planning on shattering land speed records. Bragging rights are so much more satisfying when they come with an official seal.
However, this track time by Porsche exceeded even their own expectations. Frank-Steffen Walliser, Vice President for Porsche 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.” Like I said: so much more satisfying.
And the results were not only impressive, but they were consistently replicated. Porsche test driver Lars Kern from Germany and Porsche factory driver Nick Tandy from the UK broke the previous record for road-approved sports cars (6 minutes, 52.01 seconds) in their first attempt. They went on to complete five laps in record-breaking times, each under 6 minutes, 50 seconds. The final new record-holding time of 6 minutes 47.3 seconds was set by Kern.
Unsurprisingly, Porsche is just as pleased by this consistency of performance as by the times themselves. Andreas Preuninger, Porsche’s Director of the 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.”
It’s probably not true that every single driver could get into a Porsche 911 GT2 RS and get these excellent times – kids, don’t try this at home – but the consistency speaks very well for the car itself, as well as for the ideals that Porsche embodies. This combination of excellent performance and rock-solid reliability is pretty much the foundation that Porsche is built on. It’s not just that it’s good, it’s that it’s good every time.
This road-worthy new Porsche 911 GT2 RS made its debut this year at Goodwood in the United Kingdom, in June of this year. So by all accounts, this car and this brand are earning themselves one heck of a first birthday present.
