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Rohrl shakes down GT3 at the ring

Nurburgring lap times. Utterly irrelevant to real-world performance (unless you live in Germany and can drive like a god), but you’re aching to know what Walter Röhrl clocked in the new GT3, aren't you?

Porsche’s naturally aspirated 911 GT3 (now powered by 320kW of 3.8l, flat-six power) was recently shaken down at an open test session at the hallowed Nordschleife circuit.

As opposed to the tightly controlled manufacturer test days, these open sessions don’t have quite the same full-bore, 11/10th’s vibe to them.

Despite this, Porsche’s mercurial test driver, Walter Röhrl (who shows no sign of retiring at 62) piloted the latest GT3 around the appropriately named Green Hell in a euphemistically quoted "unofficial" time of 7:40.


Dunlop’s PR department display of Nissan's GT-R Nurburgring test tyres – a set of run flat SP SPORT 600 DSST CTT’s. Porsche though, used a car with Bridgestone Potenza RE070R tyres. Small wonder there is a 30-second descrepency between the lap time claims...

Put into perspective, the GM Corvette ZR1 is runs a 7:26, and the Oriental supercar, Nissan’s GT-R clocks 7:29, though Nissan’s 2010 spec car is alleged to run a 7:27...

Obviously German pride does not take lightly to foreign products running such quick times, and Porsche has done its utmost to rubbish Nissan’s Nurburgring times by alleging the car running is anything but stock.

Porsche says the GT-R is only good of a time of around 7:54 in factory form, which is a huge disparity to what Nissan claims (with lap-time slips) to have achieved.

We expect the next chapter in the Porsche/Nissan Nurburgring laptime vloermoer-saga to ensue after uncle (we can’t call him granddad) Walter posts an "official" time in the GT3.



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