Porsche 911 GT3 sets new Nürburgring record for manual cars

In a PlayStation era where the real fast road cars and almost every factory entered race car on the planet comes with a lightning quick auto shifting gearbox, it’s refreshing to see that Porsche can still offer the purist a manual gearbox.

As it turns out, one of these offerings is the 992.2 Porsche 911 GT3, a car that has just become the fastest production car with a manual transmission on the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Faster by almost 10 seconds

In a game defined in milliseconds, Porsche brand ambassador and racing driver Jörg Bergmeister beat the previous record set by Dodge’s Viper ACR by over 9.5 seconds.

Due to extensive continued development of all performance-relevant vehicle components, the manual 911 GT3 with the optional Weissach Package was also 3.633 seconds quicker than its predecessor model (992.1) with the PDK auto transmission.

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“More and more customers of the 911 GT3 are opting for the six-speed manual transmission. And more and more often we are asked by these customers how fast a 911 GT3 with manual transmission would be on the Nordschleife,” Andreas Preuninger, director of Porsche GT Cars, said.

“We have now answered this question and even without the automated, super-fast and precise gearshifts of the PDK and with a mechanical instead of electronically controlled limited slip differential, the new 911 GT3 takes around 3.6 seconds off its predecessor with PDK.”

Setting the pace

In sunny weather, at 12 degrees ambient and 27 degrees asphalt temperature, Bergmeister set out on the 20.832km track in the late afternoon in the 375kW 911 GT3 with optional Weissach package.

As with the official lap of the previous model, he was out on the circuit using road-legal 255/35 R20 and 315/30 R21 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tyres on the front and rear.

“When we decided to set the official lap time of the new 911 GT3 with manual transmission, we naturally also looked at who was at the top of the leaderboard,” Preuninger said.

A competitor needed 7:01.300 minutes for the shorter 20.6km track layout. This corresponds to a time of around 7:05.800 minutes on the full 20.832km lap.

Under the supervision of an independent notary public, the lap time of the 911 GT3 was validated at 6:56.294 minutes. With that, Bergmeister improved the previous lap record by almost 10 seconds.

“The 911 GT3 inspires even more confidence at the limit than the previous model. I was faster in almost every corner,” Bergmeister said, describing the handling of the sports car.

“We learned a lot from the 911 GT3 RS, especially with the chassis. The car is even more stable on bumps and over the curbs.

“Thanks to the eight percent shorter gear ratio, there is noticeably more power on 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 thus also a bit more fun.”

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