Porsche has set a new road-legal, rear-wheel drive sports car record around the 20.6km Nurburgring Nordschleife, confirming the new GT2 RS as the fastest 911 ever built.
Unveiled in June, the new 515kW six-cylinder biturbo Porsche set a time of 6 minutes, 47.3 seconds, shattering the records set by Lamborghini's four-wheel drive Performate and rear-wheel drive Chevrolet Camaro earlier this year.
In fact, the new GT2 RS time is ten seconds faster than the all-wheel drive Porsche 918 Spyder hypercar, a time that was set four years ago.
The only road-legal car to ever set a faster time around the Nurbugring is the Chinese-built NIO EP9 electric hypercar, which bettered its previous time earlier this year with a 6 minutes, 45 seconds lap.
What makes the feat all the more impressive is that the GT2 RS actually broke the record more than once. Lars Kern from Germany and Nick Tandy from the UK broke the previous record for road-approved sports cars (Lamborghini Performante at 6 minutes, 52.01 seconds) in their first attempt and subsequently finished five laps in under 6 minutes, 50 seconds.
“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," said Andreas Preuninger, Director of Porsche's GT Model Line.
"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”
Porsche's GT2 RS squad. (left to right) Eugen Oberkamm , Andreas Preuninger, Lars Kern and Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser
It was Lars Kern, a Porsche test driver who ultimately set the final record time. The record lap began at 7:11 pm and finished 6 minutes and 47.3 seconds later in ideal conditions. The GT2 RS was fitted with Michelin Pilot Cup 2 tyres (the same fitted to customers' cars on from the dealership) and averaged 184.11km/h on the record setting lap.
“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," said Frank-Steffen Walliser, Vice President Motorsport and GT Cars.
"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”.
Road-legal Nurburging Lap Times
- Nio EP9 - 6:45:90
- Porsche GT2 RS - 6:47:3 (fastest RWD production car)
- Lamborghini Huracan Performante - 6:52:01 (fastest AWD production car)
- Porsche 918 Spider - 6:57:00
- Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce - 6:59:73
