Nearly every aspect of the road going 911 GT3 RS has been tuned to build a thoroughbred race car. Only a couple of weeks ago, spy photographers snapped a souped up GT3 RS with a huge wing at the Monza Circuit in Italy. We now know that the car is the 2019 Porsche 911 GT3 R - a track only variant of the recently launched 911 GT3 RS mark II road car. Developed for the 2019 racing season, the race car uses a 4.0-liter flat-six engine largely identical to the one in the road car. Porsche has overhauled the already extreme aerodynamics of the road going GT3 RS with canards in the front, vents on the hood, a large diffuser and an even larger rear wing. The engineers have reworked the tire circumference at the front wheels increasing it from 650 to 680 millimeters and have installed the latest development of the company鈥檚 double wishbone suspension. Porsche engineers also spent some time working on the braking system to increase stiffness and also to enable a more accurate control of the anti-lock brakes. There are six-piston monobloc brake calipers made from aluminum at the front axle that are paired to ventilated and grooved 390 mm discs. At the rear, engineers have installed four-piston calipers hooked up with 370 mm discs. Inside, new bucket seats bolted at six points increase both the safety and look of the interior. Safety has especially received great attention as engineers have installed carbon fiber kevlar aluminum components with energy-absorbing plastic foam to serve as a side impact element in the event of a collision. Also, both the door and side windows are removable now. 548,000 plus taxes. Deliveries will commence in December.
The final step involves putting a light amount of general purpose grease on the steering rack itself before the rubber gators are attached to either end of the rack. You are now ready to reattach the hoses from the rack to power steering pump and pipe from the power steering oil cooler. As a precaution I used some plastic cable protector to wrap the pipe to prevent it rubbing on some points on the chassis (shown by orange arrows below). If you find that your steering wheel is not centered then make sure the road wheels are facing forward as straight as you can get them by manoeuvring the car. Then pull off the horn button that sits across the centre of the steering wheel. Use a socket with and extension bar to undo the big nut in the centre. Then simply pull off the steering wheel, adjust it to the correct position, reattach the nut and horn button and you are done.
They鈥檙e all lined up. First, a tidy brown 鈥?7 coupe, tiptoeing on skinny tires. Then a G-body car from the 鈥?0s, frog-faced and wider than the last. The 964 beside it, broader still, is all eggplant-purple hips and nineties optimism. The conga line continues: 993, 996, 997, and 991 generations. Porsche pulls this often at events, placing the old guard by the new. Because staring down the row of coupes conjures nostalgia and draws visual parallels鈥攖he original shape, swelling from 1963 on. Old 911s are dripping in cachet. Porsche knows it. But today, queued in the pits at Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, Spain, the lineup feels odd. It鈥檚 a reminder of how separate the recent generations now feel, of time and distance covered. Some 911 evolutions were radical鈥攖hink the 993 chassis in 1993, when the 911 lost its torsion beam rear suspension to a multi-link setup, and the body seemed sculpted via fisheye lens. Other evolutions were controversial, like the Apocalypse-Now switch from air to water cooling with the late-Nineties 996 generation.
This transition, from 2019鈥檚 991.2 chassis, appears minute. The 992 shares its wheelbase with the outgoing car, but its body is slightly longer. Front and rear tracks widen by 40 millimeters. The Carrera 2S and 4S models, the first of the 992 lot, share the same widebody. Which is unlike in years past, when the rear-wheel-drive models were narrower than their all-wheel-drive counterparts. The 992鈥檚 party piece is an LED light strip spanning the gap between taillights鈥攁 throwback to the 鈥?0s 911 Turbo. The effect widens the car, visually; enhancing views of the 992鈥檚 swollen haunches. The 992鈥檚 wheels swell, too, because those dimensions only go one way. The setup is staggered both in width, and in diameter (20 inches in the front, 21 in the rear). The latter is another first for the 911. Pirelli P Zero NA0 tires wrap the gemlike wheels, 245/35 up front, 305/30 out back.