Modified Porsche Cayman GTS Laps Thermal Club

Southern California’s Thermal Club racetrack looks especially great in 360-cam format from behind the wheel of a hotted-up, mid-engine Porsche. 

First things first, let’s discuss the track. Thermal Club is a gorgeous private motorsports country club (in the vein of Autobahn and Atlanta Motorsports Park) located near Palm Desert, California. The track hosts myriad circuit layouts. The two shown here are the South Palm and North Palm tracks, both designed by Alan Wilson.

The distance driven in this video is about three miles in total, split evenly between the two layouts. As you can see from the video, the track has a nice flow to it with wide, paved surfaces and adequate runoff for safety. It’s a relatively flat circuit, but it has a nice mixture of slow- and medium-speed corners with easy sight lines and smooth apex exits.

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The car featured in the video began life as a production 981-generation Porsche Cayman GTS. That’s an already great car directly from Porsche, but this one has been given a few performance-enhancing modifications to set it apart from any other production Cayman.

Inside, the car looks much the same, barring the OMP racing seat for the driver, as well as a full safety harness. There is a bit of added roll protection in the rear of the car as well, which likely also helps with chassis stiffness to a degree.

The car came from Porsche with 340 horsepower on tap, but this car has bumped that up a bit with a louder exhaust and a more aggressive tune. The Cayman has also been fitted with lightweight wheels, sticky tires, and what appears to be a GT3 Cup rear wing. According to the folks who’ve driven it, the car “performs more like a GT4 with a PDK transmission”. Ride along and see for yourself.