Hot laps in the new 911 GT3: is this peak Porsche?

After Porsche GT boss Andreas Preuninger has conducted the showbiz reveal, guests gather for passenger rides.

We jostle for position on the asphalted paddock-veranda behind Porsche’s towering experience centre at Hockenheim; it being 7.30pm in mid-October, the unlit test track spread out below our high vantage point is in total darkness. 

Soon enough the vagaries of its twisting layout will be traced by the frenetic headlights of two 911 GT3s whose engines appear to be jammed at 9000rpm. Every two minutes, one of the cars re-surfaces from the black, screaming up the access ramp to our position, showered in camera flashes, to spit out one victim and gobble up another. 

Jörg Bergmeister is in the silver car, with Walter Rörhl in a grey Touring, demonstrating even in the entry and getaway phases of the passenger-swap pitstop a speed and feral intensity the man clearly cannot help. It’s a manic atmosphere; the wail of the engines is almost warming the ambient temperature and the air has that distinct aroma of baked Porsche. 

When both cars are out there together – mechanical fireflies ripping through the dark – the launch party for the new GT3 seems a sort of art installation. 

And then it’s my turn. There will be time in the future to discuss the niceties of the revised GT3, which include optional back seats in the kinder-friendly Touring and removable headrest covers, to make more space for helmet-shod heads. 

But the next 120 seconds is about violence. Bergmeister explains that it’s still a little damp out there, then proceeds to drive this GT3 flat as flat-out can be. He has the tyres simmering and in his hands the grip at both ends of the car is bewildering. The revised rubber compound for the Michelin Cup 2s is apparently notably improved when it’s greasy underwheel. I can well believe it. 

There is also heavily retuned damping, which Preuninger says takes learnings from the pliant S/T in its low-speed motion (piston-speed, that is) but so too offers better high-load, high-speed control than the previous car. There’s also more anti-dive in the suspension – “a small change but it offers a lot of confidence” says Preuninger, especially for race-drivers who notice “every millimetre” of pitch during hard trail-braking and a shifting chassis balance. 

Of course it’s impossible to grasp the technicalities now – only the mad directness with which Bergmeister can smash the car’s front axle into bends, and the equally stunning ability of that subtly reprofiled tail to follow suit, putting up to 503bhp and 332lb ft to the ground despite stomach-turning G-forces. 

And the engine. Bloody hell, the engine. Does it sound even better than before? It just might, somehow. Then again, all engines sound fiercer in the dark, especially atmospheric ones, and it really is dark out here. 

We get back and I see Bergmeister hasn’t even bothered to change out of his smart suit for what will end up being an hour of breathless passenger rides. It’s hard not to laugh – the 48-year-old is as indefatigable and enthusiastic as the machine that still takes the Porsche 911 to perhaps its highest heights.