Video: Screaming Porsche 911 GT3 Cup gets lairy on Goodwood Hill

15th July 2023

Russell Campbell

Adam Smalley today demonstrated why the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup – complete with its swan-neck spoiler and double-wishbone front suspension – is a formidable race car as he guided it up the Hill with surgeon-like precision.

The GT3 Cup is the world's best-selling race car and an excellent tool for demonstrating the road-going GT3 DNA's tight entanglement with motorsport.

Like the road car, the Cup features a 510PS (375kW) 4.0-litre flat-six, albeit one that screams to an 8,750rpm redline rather than 9,000rpm. It sends power to the back wheels via a six-speed sequential gearbox and limited-slip rear differential.

Performance? Well as Adam proved on the Hill at the 2023 Festival of Speed, there’s a lot of it. There aren’t any real performance figures to speak of - 0-62mph figures aren’t quite as important for race cars. But the new 992 GT3 RS road car weighs 1,525kg and will do 0-62mph in 3.2 seconds and 184mph flat-out. The GT3 Cup weighs only 1,260kg…

The rest of the Cup’s specs read like a race driver's dream shopping list. Along with doors and a rear hatch made of carbon-fibre, you get an FIA-approved roll cage, race seat and, erm, a rescue hatch. Other must-haves include forged control arms, massive six-pot front/four-pot rear callipers with 380mm discs and a massive 110-litre fuel tank.

All that's left is to choose your paint job – you can have any shade, so long as it's GT Silver Metallic. And the price? More than £190,000.

The GT3 and GT3 RS are both mighty fine road cars - in fact it’s quite baffling to think these cars can do things like lap the Nordschleife in 6 minutes 49 seconds, in the case of the GT3 RS, but also be used to pop to the shops or collect the kids from school. But if laptime is all that matters in the world and you had a chance to drive or own a GT3 Cup, you just would, wouldn’t you?

Once again, we must thank Mr Smalley for joining us at the Festival. He hasn’t done a wheelie in the GT3 Cup yet, as he did in 2022 (although he gives it a decent go here), but all of his runs so far - including this one - have been flat-out and fearless. Maybe we’ll see a GT3 Cup at the top of the leaderboard in the Timed Shootout come Sunday afternoon?

Photography by Pete Summers.