Running the 'Ring: Euro delivery of a Porsche GT3 RS . . . backward
#1
07-27-2008, 05:56 PM
Running the 'Ring: Euro delivery of a Porsche GT3 RS . . . backward Ronin's amazing adventure as published by Autoweek!
Last fall, my Porsche dealer called to say that there had been a cancellation on a green 2008 GT3 RS, a car I had wanted for a couple of years. I jumped at it, despite the fact that the car was at the dealership in Canada already, so no Euro delivery was possible.
But this car needed to be driven in Europe. So in June, I shipped it back across the Atlantic Ocean by boat.
After picking up the car in Frankfurt, I headed for Leipzig and Berlin on a trip that would take me to running the track at Spa-Francorchamps and for a full week at the Nürburgring. The car was ready to go in a half-hour after we cleared German customs and fueled up. At $150 a tank, the impact of fuel prices in Europe is huge. The RS is Porsche's rarest and most trackable car, though by no means the most powerful, being eclipsed by both the Turbo and the GT2. It has very limited luggage capacity and is not an ideal touring GT, but all is instantly forgotten when I hit some open, empty autobahn approaching Leipzig. There was not a thing in sight until I saw an approaching Audi RS6 V10, evidently delimited, heading down at high speed. It had local plates, so I moved in behind him. For 30 minutes, we ran on the open autobahn and then settled down at 180 mph. The RS is surprisingly planted and stable at this speed. Older Porsches I have tried can get very light and can be nervous.
Driving on the autobahn is an exercise in alertness and common sense. There are frequent speed-limited stretches, and they are there for good reason, so it is a very bad (and expensive) idea to exceed posted limits. Merging traffic has the right of way, which can push the traffic sideways into the fast lane, so typically there are stretches that are 70 mph and work zones that are often 35 mph. You need to look as far forward as possible while keeping an eye on the mirror if you're venturing into the passing lane. Speed limits also vary with weather conditions. In general, lane discipline is the best in the world, with a virtual absence of left-lane hogs, tailgaters, right-lane passers and road rage. Autobahns are also kept in very good condition.
Designed for the track
The RS has phenomenal grip in the dry on the soft Michelin Cup tires, and braking is well up to the task. It is the most driver-focused, controllable car I have ever owned, and the sense of its being completely aligned to what the driver wants to do is palpable. The naturally aspirated dry-sump engine is unique to the GT3 and loves to rev. Quickly, a routine of changing up at 6000 rpm becomes the norm at speed, well below the 8500 redline.
The car was reprogrammed in advance to use the European nav system, which is impressive, as it picks up traffic messages and dynamically reroutes to avoid major problems such as accidents, so driving through some very convoluted European cities is a breeze. On my stopover in Berlin, I found an identically painted but much older 911 outside the Reichstag.
The tag on the car said "NRDSCHLF." This attracted a huge amount of attention and photographs everywhere, including three stops by the Polizei. There are no plates in Germany that don't contain numbers. Once the appropriate papers were produced, suspicion gave way to smiles and questions about bringing a car for such a long distance. The car also displayed its German emissions permit, required in order to enter some cities.
A day at Spa
The touring phase over, I headed to Spa-Francorchamps, where RSR Racing had arranged for a few hours' lap time on a Saturday. At 8:30 a.m. in bright sunshine, we ventured out onto the most historic of Formula One tracks, set in rolling Belgian farmland. It was glorious. We had the whole track for half an hour with only two cars. Ron Simon, my instructor, gave clear, experienced advice, and as additional cars came on, we gradually came to grips with the track. On the famous Eau Rouge, as you head up the hill, there are few visual markers to help you position the car for the sweeping left-hander on the other side, and lifting off here, especially in a Porsche, is an recipe for an instant spin. Fortunately, as a modern F1 track, Spa has large runoff areas. As it turned out, I would need them.
Early in the session, I came into the chicane far too hot, and the back end came around in a flash. There was no damage of any kind, but I got a lesson in not overreaching. As we got a bit faster, it was obvious just how perfect the RS was for track use. It had no stability control, but the active suspension did a superb job of keeping the wheels in contact with the road. By the end of the morning, we had just scratched the surface of what the track offered, and I decided that I'd have to make a longer visit in the future.
As we left the track, it started to rain. As I would discover later in the week, the PS cups had very little ability to clear standing water. A trip on the autobahn in a rainstorm left me tiptoeing in the slow lane with the feeling of driving on black ice. If it rained all week at the Nürburgring, with its notoriously uncertain weather, I would be in trouble.
Pulling into the Hotel am Tiergarten on Sunday night, I saw the usual wild assemblage of cars parked randomly around. The next day, I would venture out with Markus Gedlich, a VLN series Porsche driver, and we would return to the greatest track of all, the Nordschleife.
Ready for the 'Ring
Two years ago, I did 50.5 laps there in a BMW M6. At the time, I was told that there were only two kinds of drivers on the 'Ring: those who have already crashed and those who are going to crash.
Three-time Le Mans winner and Nürburgring 1000-km winner Hans Stuck had told me a couple of weeks previously to respect the track. He had just tried an RS there and said that the gear ratios were ideal and that at less than eight-tenths, the car was absolutely predictable. At the limit, a lot of skill would be required to keep things tidy. I would heed this advice.
The GPS data logging system was installed on the car, and we headed in for the first lap. It was fairly crowded, and there were lots of GT3s there. I suspect that the GT3 is one of the cars with a very high percentage of track use. The Euro cars are identical in performance to the North American cars, but they have track interiors, including CF seats and roll cages, and high-capacity fuel tanks. Everything on the 'Ring is about taking the right line, and understanding the line for each corner is essential. No amount of PlayStation practice can give you the massive compression or the thousand-foot elevation change on this 14.9-mile track. Marcus used minimal steering inputs and hit the line every time. By the end of the session, I had reduced my time by a minute and a half, and Marcus had explained the areas I needed to work on.
On the Nordschleife, the RS was simply phenomenal. At no point in the 44 laps I would do that week did it get away from me, and the corners and lines slowly became smoother. In some cases, the apex of a corner is so far around that you drive straight for the wall with a turn only feet from the Armco. It's not intuitive. It is said that 500 laps are necessary to develop an adequate amount of competence here.
Bikers are a constant worry, as they cannot always see the cars behind them and will sometimes turn in unexpectedly. As the week progressed, there were quite a few minor biker incidents resulting in cuts and bruises but nothing more. There were very few accidents during the week, apart from an M5 hitting the wall and leaving a sea of oil on the track. A Lotus 2-Eleven missed a gear ahead of me, causing only some debris.
By midweek, the track was nearly empty, and I had eight laps one evening almost all to myself. The exhilaration of driving the tree-lined track in a car that was developed there was unbelievable.
The RS was almost exactly twice as fuel-efficient as the M6 I had brought previously, so the need to leave for a trip to the gas station was much reduced.
Busy weekends
As the weekend approached, more cars appeared. It was an old-timer weekend over on the F1 track, and some amazing cars started to appear. I saw a Mercedes SSK and a BMW 328 on the main straight. I wondered if they were running at the 'Ring when they were first produced 60 or 70 years ago. Over on the F1 track, BMW M1s, Porsche 935s and a huge variety of other hardware were running. Wandering around the paddock , I ran across a meeting of the Horch Club. I had never seen more than one of them at a time, but that day, 30 of the magnificent cars showed up.
You never know what you will see at the 'Ring. By Friday afternoon, there was a wild mix of cars in the park. Messerschmitts mingled with Morgans, Jag XKs, Corvettes and the inevitable gaggle of Porsches. By this stage, I was becoming more comfortable and could put in some respectable lap times. The RS had no rattles, no problems, apart from worn tires. It's the first car I have ever owned that I will not sell. As one of the last pre-PDK cars, with no stability control, it is a very direct descendant of the raw Porsches of old, with the vices well and truly tamed.
On the last day, the old-timers went out early, and, as is often the case, oil was dropped around the track, dangerous for everyone but lethal for bikers, so opening was delayed. The parking lot was crowded with everything from panel vans to clapped-out Minis, and I decided not to spoil a perfect week.
The following day was chaos, with multiple accidents. The car went off to have its tires changed, and after 44 laps, the only wear was to the pads and some slight cracking on the steel discs.
I was finished for the week. The car finally got its Nordschleife logo on the tail. Soon it would make the long trip back across the Atlantic.
That's the Nürburgring for you--an insane mix of leading-edge development cars, bikers, expert drivers, inexperienced amateurs and anything from a Ferrari to a Smart car around every corner. Unpredictable weather that can change in minutes is the norm. Yet there is a warmth and a helpfulness that make it unique. With 94 laps down, I am just barely getting the feel of it. There is nothing remotely like it in the world.
Ronan McGrath is a contributor to AutoWeek.
Last fall, my Porsche dealer called to say that there had been a cancellation on a green 2008 GT3 RS, a car I had wanted for a couple of years. I jumped at it, despite the fact that the car was at the dealership in Canada already, so no Euro delivery was possible.
But this car needed to be driven in Europe. So in June, I shipped it back across the Atlantic Ocean by boat.
After picking up the car in Frankfurt, I headed for Leipzig and Berlin on a trip that would take me to running the track at Spa-Francorchamps and for a full week at the Nürburgring. The car was ready to go in a half-hour after we cleared German customs and fueled up. At $150 a tank, the impact of fuel prices in Europe is huge. The RS is Porsche's rarest and most trackable car, though by no means the most powerful, being eclipsed by both the Turbo and the GT2. It has very limited luggage capacity and is not an ideal touring GT, but all is instantly forgotten when I hit some open, empty autobahn approaching Leipzig. There was not a thing in sight until I saw an approaching Audi RS6 V10, evidently delimited, heading down at high speed. It had local plates, so I moved in behind him. For 30 minutes, we ran on the open autobahn and then settled down at 180 mph. The RS is surprisingly planted and stable at this speed. Older Porsches I have tried can get very light and can be nervous.
Driving on the autobahn is an exercise in alertness and common sense. There are frequent speed-limited stretches, and they are there for good reason, so it is a very bad (and expensive) idea to exceed posted limits. Merging traffic has the right of way, which can push the traffic sideways into the fast lane, so typically there are stretches that are 70 mph and work zones that are often 35 mph. You need to look as far forward as possible while keeping an eye on the mirror if you're venturing into the passing lane. Speed limits also vary with weather conditions. In general, lane discipline is the best in the world, with a virtual absence of left-lane hogs, tailgaters, right-lane passers and road rage. Autobahns are also kept in very good condition.
Designed for the track
The RS has phenomenal grip in the dry on the soft Michelin Cup tires, and braking is well up to the task. It is the most driver-focused, controllable car I have ever owned, and the sense of its being completely aligned to what the driver wants to do is palpable. The naturally aspirated dry-sump engine is unique to the GT3 and loves to rev. Quickly, a routine of changing up at 6000 rpm becomes the norm at speed, well below the 8500 redline.
The car was reprogrammed in advance to use the European nav system, which is impressive, as it picks up traffic messages and dynamically reroutes to avoid major problems such as accidents, so driving through some very convoluted European cities is a breeze. On my stopover in Berlin, I found an identically painted but much older 911 outside the Reichstag.
The tag on the car said "NRDSCHLF." This attracted a huge amount of attention and photographs everywhere, including three stops by the Polizei. There are no plates in Germany that don't contain numbers. Once the appropriate papers were produced, suspicion gave way to smiles and questions about bringing a car for such a long distance. The car also displayed its German emissions permit, required in order to enter some cities.
A day at Spa
The touring phase over, I headed to Spa-Francorchamps, where RSR Racing had arranged for a few hours' lap time on a Saturday. At 8:30 a.m. in bright sunshine, we ventured out onto the most historic of Formula One tracks, set in rolling Belgian farmland. It was glorious. We had the whole track for half an hour with only two cars. Ron Simon, my instructor, gave clear, experienced advice, and as additional cars came on, we gradually came to grips with the track. On the famous Eau Rouge, as you head up the hill, there are few visual markers to help you position the car for the sweeping left-hander on the other side, and lifting off here, especially in a Porsche, is an recipe for an instant spin. Fortunately, as a modern F1 track, Spa has large runoff areas. As it turned out, I would need them.
Early in the session, I came into the chicane far too hot, and the back end came around in a flash. There was no damage of any kind, but I got a lesson in not overreaching. As we got a bit faster, it was obvious just how perfect the RS was for track use. It had no stability control, but the active suspension did a superb job of keeping the wheels in contact with the road. By the end of the morning, we had just scratched the surface of what the track offered, and I decided that I'd have to make a longer visit in the future.
As we left the track, it started to rain. As I would discover later in the week, the PS cups had very little ability to clear standing water. A trip on the autobahn in a rainstorm left me tiptoeing in the slow lane with the feeling of driving on black ice. If it rained all week at the Nürburgring, with its notoriously uncertain weather, I would be in trouble.
Pulling into the Hotel am Tiergarten on Sunday night, I saw the usual wild assemblage of cars parked randomly around. The next day, I would venture out with Markus Gedlich, a VLN series Porsche driver, and we would return to the greatest track of all, the Nordschleife.
Ready for the 'Ring
Two years ago, I did 50.5 laps there in a BMW M6. At the time, I was told that there were only two kinds of drivers on the 'Ring: those who have already crashed and those who are going to crash.
Three-time Le Mans winner and Nürburgring 1000-km winner Hans Stuck had told me a couple of weeks previously to respect the track. He had just tried an RS there and said that the gear ratios were ideal and that at less than eight-tenths, the car was absolutely predictable. At the limit, a lot of skill would be required to keep things tidy. I would heed this advice.
The GPS data logging system was installed on the car, and we headed in for the first lap. It was fairly crowded, and there were lots of GT3s there. I suspect that the GT3 is one of the cars with a very high percentage of track use. The Euro cars are identical in performance to the North American cars, but they have track interiors, including CF seats and roll cages, and high-capacity fuel tanks. Everything on the 'Ring is about taking the right line, and understanding the line for each corner is essential. No amount of PlayStation practice can give you the massive compression or the thousand-foot elevation change on this 14.9-mile track. Marcus used minimal steering inputs and hit the line every time. By the end of the session, I had reduced my time by a minute and a half, and Marcus had explained the areas I needed to work on.
On the Nordschleife, the RS was simply phenomenal. At no point in the 44 laps I would do that week did it get away from me, and the corners and lines slowly became smoother. In some cases, the apex of a corner is so far around that you drive straight for the wall with a turn only feet from the Armco. It's not intuitive. It is said that 500 laps are necessary to develop an adequate amount of competence here.
Bikers are a constant worry, as they cannot always see the cars behind them and will sometimes turn in unexpectedly. As the week progressed, there were quite a few minor biker incidents resulting in cuts and bruises but nothing more. There were very few accidents during the week, apart from an M5 hitting the wall and leaving a sea of oil on the track. A Lotus 2-Eleven missed a gear ahead of me, causing only some debris.
By midweek, the track was nearly empty, and I had eight laps one evening almost all to myself. The exhilaration of driving the tree-lined track in a car that was developed there was unbelievable.
The RS was almost exactly twice as fuel-efficient as the M6 I had brought previously, so the need to leave for a trip to the gas station was much reduced.
Busy weekends
As the weekend approached, more cars appeared. It was an old-timer weekend over on the F1 track, and some amazing cars started to appear. I saw a Mercedes SSK and a BMW 328 on the main straight. I wondered if they were running at the 'Ring when they were first produced 60 or 70 years ago. Over on the F1 track, BMW M1s, Porsche 935s and a huge variety of other hardware were running. Wandering around the paddock , I ran across a meeting of the Horch Club. I had never seen more than one of them at a time, but that day, 30 of the magnificent cars showed up.
You never know what you will see at the 'Ring. By Friday afternoon, there was a wild mix of cars in the park. Messerschmitts mingled with Morgans, Jag XKs, Corvettes and the inevitable gaggle of Porsches. By this stage, I was becoming more comfortable and could put in some respectable lap times. The RS had no rattles, no problems, apart from worn tires. It's the first car I have ever owned that I will not sell. As one of the last pre-PDK cars, with no stability control, it is a very direct descendant of the raw Porsches of old, with the vices well and truly tamed.
On the last day, the old-timers went out early, and, as is often the case, oil was dropped around the track, dangerous for everyone but lethal for bikers, so opening was delayed. The parking lot was crowded with everything from panel vans to clapped-out Minis, and I decided not to spoil a perfect week.
The following day was chaos, with multiple accidents. The car went off to have its tires changed, and after 44 laps, the only wear was to the pads and some slight cracking on the steel discs.
I was finished for the week. The car finally got its Nordschleife logo on the tail. Soon it would make the long trip back across the Atlantic.
That's the Nürburgring for you--an insane mix of leading-edge development cars, bikers, expert drivers, inexperienced amateurs and anything from a Ferrari to a Smart car around every corner. Unpredictable weather that can change in minutes is the norm. Yet there is a warmth and a helpfulness that make it unique. With 94 laps down, I am just barely getting the feel of it. There is nothing remotely like it in the world.
Ronan McGrath is a contributor to AutoWeek.
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