The Porsche 911 GT3 RS is the peak of track day performance | GRR Cars of the Year 2023
It's been an incredibly exciting year for the motoring industry. We here at GRR have driven so many brilliant cars over the past 12 months, and everything we’ve always loved is still right here, it’s just arguably better than it’s ever been. To evidence our point, we’ve pulled together nine cars that we consider to be among the very best of 2023, and we’re going to celebrate their brilliance right here at Goodwood.
Porsche’s GT products always leave doe-eyed journalists with the same burning question, as they hand the keys back: how on earth do they go better, harder and faster, with this? Long before the car’s reveal, we knew from prototype sightings that the 992 GT3 RS was going to have simply outrageous aerodynamics. Though we didn’t know quite how deep and how extreme the transformation and enhancements would go, by comparison to the GT3 on which it’s based.
Eight hundred kilograms of downforce at 177mph. That’s more than the race cars. Active driver-controlled DRS. That’s not even allowed on the race cars. Hotter cams in the 4.0-litre 525PS (386kW) flat-six for a broader – if shallower – torque curve, throughout the revs, which as we all know, scream up to a 9,000rpm redline. Magnesium wheels shod in Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s with a 335 section at the rear, magnetic paddles that pull the gears home with a satisfying ‘click’, the carbon roll cage, the 918 Spyder seats – it’s all cumulative to the Porsche 911 GT3 RS experience. Yet none of it is the true genius of the new GT3 RS; none of this is what makes the 992 quite unlike any RS that’s preceded it. No, for the answer to that, you need only look at the steering wheel and its four rotary knobs.
It’s these that grant the driver eight-way adjustability over the suspension’s bump and rebound (front and rear), the diff’s locking aggression both on and off throttle, the electronic stability control and the traction control. In short, you can tailor the GT3 RS to any track and any road, from the stiffest most stable platform to maximise the aero at Silverstone, to a compliant, manipulable road car for traversing the Kirkstone pass.
It’s this that makes the GT3 RS truly one of the great cars of this year, and one of the all-time great Porsche sportscars. It’ll obviously paste a standard GT3 on track but, in contrast to its racier visuals, it’ll transform quite literally at the flick of a few switches, into a better road car too.
What is somewhat perplexing is that what is quite obviously an ‘Individual Mode’ – the one that allows all this adjustment – is called ‘Track Mode’ in the 992 GT3 RS. Yes, for your RS to be the best road car it can be, you need to be in Track Mode. Go figure.
Be sure to watch the Goodwood Road and Racing Cars of the Year video when it launches on Friday 15th December.
Photography by Joe Harding.
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