You’re in the thick of it when you shift from third to fourth, the 3.8 liter Metzger four feet behind you becoming gradually more and more impatient. The gearshift action is not notchy so much as stalwart, moving with a positive vector if your hand and forearm are doing the same. But right now, today, you aren’t thinking about the gearbox of the Porsche GT3 RS. Right now, you are thinking about what makes this car so similar and so different from Ferrari’s 360 Challenge Stradale.
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The RS and Stradale are very different answers to the same question. Bristling with race-bred technology, Porsche and Ferrari's lightweight specials both have the same road to racecar aspirations, but their origins traverse different paths. The RS's route is more conventional: they made the Porsche to homologate racing technology into their GT3 Cup and GT3 RSR cars. Its racing credibility shot through the roof when Porsche haughtily slapped a full cage, eighteen inch, five-lugged wheels, a fire extinguisher, a Recaro, two Germans and a Brit into a stock 997.2 RS and entered it into the most difficult 24-Hour race in existence. The fact that it placed 13th overall could be seen as a company endowed with absolute faith in its product, or can be described by another word: balls.

Ferrari's gestation is slightly more convoluted. Here we have Ferrari campaigning a roadcar based on a racecar based on a roadcar, and whose technology eventually informed a later racecar. Taking the standard, 400 horsepower 360 Modena and subjecting it to a full one-make race specification, the Ferrari 360 Challenge was born, just like the 348 and 355 Challenge that preceded. It was from this car that Ferrari drew its dietary inspiration to make the Challenge Stradale, when in fact there aren't that many pure similarities. While the Stradale inherited the Challenge's rear grille and BBS wheels similar to the CHs, the Stradale's nose, mirrors, and engine cover, and gearshift software were completely original. To complete Ferrari's ultimate model patty-cake, the Stradale's mirrors, sideboards, and various suspension components subsequently managed to sneak their way into Ferrari's 360 GT.

In whatever fashion, regular customers had won the lottery. Teeming with homologation goodies, both cars illustrate what happens when bean counters lose power in board room. The Porsche RS is every inch the track refugee, from its blistered wheel flares – a necessity purely to accommodate the more obese front footprints – to its single lug nut wheels arrogantly eschewing the road practicality of changing a flat tire in exchange for the track practicality of shaving seconds in the pitlane. The Stradale’s presence is startling as well. Those who believe the modifications from the standard 360 are subtle might also have trouble distinguishing between pre- and post-plastic surgery Mickey Rourke. Visual differences are obscene, from its ruthlessly low ride height to its insectile carbon fiber side mirrors to the pert, upturned rear spoiler, to the completely vertical side-skirts that only serve to accentuate the most aggressive front camber on any roadcar you have ever seen.

A car’s posture is perhaps one of its most important unsung visual elements, the realm of suspension tuners and wheel-and-offset scientists. They, more than anyone, understand how futile an exercise it would be to try to modify either of these cars. The CS’s lower beltline and perched rear give it a tip-toe forward stance, a track runner moments before the starting rifle is fired into the air. The higher-belted, be-winged RS concentrates its visual mass towards the rear, and stretches forward, bracing itself to try and cut through the air whilst keeping its mass planted; it is the winter Olympic athlete, leaning backwards milliseconds before entering the first corner in luge.

Everyday practicality becomes the sacrificial lamb in any lightweight special, but the Ferrari is just meaner to the lamb. The Stradale’s jutting, hard-chinned front splitter is low – the impractical, road-racer, get-on-your-hands-and-knees-and-pray-it-will-clear-the-curb kind of low that only people like us would put up with. The Porsche is also skims the tarmac, and both cars have slightly long front overhangs, but the RS copes dramatically well to everyday life with its hydraulic lift implementation.

The Stradale’s exterior is achingly pleasing to look at, dainty yet brutal. It is probably more classically good looking than Stuttgart’s offering; understatement of the year considering the CS is the best looking modern Ferrari save the 355. It pulls off the perennial Ferrari hat-trick of displaying technical prowess but always looking appropriately chic, valet parked outside your local Michelin three-star restaurant. Perhaps as a consequence of this prettiness, on the exterior the RS emerges looking more ‘Ring-ready, trading a beautifully rounded, hand painted Italian stripe for door panels beleaguered with rough-and-ready Carrera-scripted decals. The GT3 RS will have more trouble in the front of Four Seasons than the Stradale but this only provides more reason for Porsche track rodents to rejoice.

In an exercise of contrasts, the Maranello’s car’s cockpit is the more Spartan and hardcore prospect, the Alcantara Fairy vomiting over the entire dashboard and seats. While Porsche fans swooned over the tiny strip of volcanic ash-colored alcantara that adorned the bottom portion of the RS.2’s dashboard, swathes of hellish red and black material cover all of the CS’s sitting and instrument surfaces. Ferrari’s attention to detail in the interior is astounding, displaying bare, impossibly glossy, hypnotically woven carbon fiber door panels and exposed floor welds betrayed only by laughably inadequate tiny black rubber mats. The Porsche is the more refined interior, sated with admittedly optional accoutrements from PCM to iPod connectivity to a SIM card slot. You feel the integrity engineered into the weight of every control and the press of every button, and you notice the bottom corners of the air conditioner knobs are cut off, just like the corners of the rear LED taillights. RS’s tactility of its surfaces continues throughout: the hard shiny white center console, the carbon strip beneath the dashboard, the soft red fabric door pulls, the tachycardia-inducing Chrono timer dominating your peripheral vision, the retina-scorching 12 o’clock yellow stripe reminding you every second where your steering wheel should and shouldn’t be. And if the purchaser were taken with a demonic trackday binge, the possibilities of a radio and air-con delete, and lightweight headlamps and battery would beef up its circuit credibility past the Ferrari’s.

Seating position can make or break a driving experience. The CS buries you deeper into the car, the bottom seat panel angled more obtusely than the RS’s, providing a more exotic experience as you sit in the lower, adjustable seat, ensconced in red velvet, struggling to peer over the tall instrument cowl. The RS is business, plain and simple. The seats clench your lumbosacral area more resolutely, and Porsche has already determined the ideal driving position for you: they are right. In the motorsports pantheon, you get the feeling that Porsche’s GT division is the kind of team you want making decisions for you.

Driving controls themselves illustrate more Ferrari v Porsche rivalry, with the CS’s multi-colored cow skinned steering wheel and billeted aluminum paddles playing to the RS’s suede covered wheel, shifter, and handbrake. In this case, Porsche clearly seemed to be more concerned with the actual surfaces the driver will be touching the most. The RS’s brake pedal will actually strike you as slightly high in relation to the gas pedal, converting your heel-and-toe work to more of a roll-the-throttle-with-the-right-side-of-your-right-foot motion. The Porsche’s middle pedal itself is the driver’s dream, full of feel and progression through its entire range, while most of the quick, violent, unrepentant stopping power can be felt in the top inch of the Stradale’s left pedal.
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You’re back in the thick of it, savoring every single moment and movement in Porsche’s latest RennSport model as you trade gear four for gear five. It is then that you think about noise. Startup in the RS is an undramatic, lean, staid, mechanical affair, like every single note has an un-engineered purpose. It is on the move when you discover the RS 3.8’s busier racket, characterized by three distinct overlaid sounds. The first is the flywheel, sputtering like a chattering busybody, mocking and goading you for not having the clutch depressed – that means you aren’t shifting or opening the throttle, and that means you aren’t driving. The second sound is true motorsport clamor, a bouncing, high-tinged pinball reverberation that constantly ascends and is truly derived from any in-car YouTube footage you can find of the unapologetic Cup Car din. The third sound is the grunt, a deep bellied turbulence that morphs into a teacher’s scolding at 6100. It is only at 7200 that the RS becomes incensed, emitting a rasping bark that can pierce through the sound of a F430 that is driving in one gear lower. Turn off the GT3 RS’s engine and all sounds simply cease to exist. This effect is not as dramatic as the Carrera GT cutoff, but is enough to make you wonder if you accidentally interrupted the crankshaft in the middle of a sentence. Ferrari’s sound is pure theater in the best sense of the word. While it doesn’t bark on startup like the F430, it blares into life and gets into a rolling, high strung chant, a pep rally ready to cheer you on until you reach the redline, shift, and the whole ordeal begins again. The difference in wail is that the RS’s builds like a Philip Glass score, while the Stradale blares consistently all the way from the upper 3000s. Then it threatens dogs’ eardrums past 7500.

While the character of the engine sounds are diametrically opposed, at redline the effect is the same – effing scary. Pushing the needle towards the red-painted area on your tachometer is easier in the Stradale because you know aural safety is a flick of the upshift paddle away. But in both instances you are certain that your deafening exercise in throttle-mediated audacity will be punctuated by an explosion, followed by bits of crankcase littering the Mass Pike in your rearview mirror.

You think about all the clichés that have been written about both these superb cars’ steering yet you struggle to describe it any other way. The RS will carve the right path through a turn and produce encyclopedias of information, but will only arrive at that conclusion through your unwavering concentration. Ferrari’s CS will duplicate the Porsche’s acrobatics, but its slightly shellacked front-end makes you wonder what kind of exhaustive detail the RS would transmit to you at that same corner. The weight of the RS steering is heavier but not cumbersome, and is hard to imagine any other car ever getting it more right. The Stradale’s rack feels noticeably faster if slightly more assisted, so you have to recalibrate your inputs to be more diminutive to achieve a steering motion that comes preternaturally in the RS.

RS’s suspension is a revelation, with or without its one-button multiple personality disorder. Even in the stiffer setting, the primary ride is hard Carrera 4S, but the secondary ride is shockingly discerning, filtering refuse from essentials, and working in perfect harmony with the active engine mounts. Never, ever will you tramline, not when the awe-inspiring torsional rigidity, inherent mechanical grip, or exquisitely compliant yet firmly controlled damping are all acting as your guardian angels. Comparing this magical combination to the jittery, crashy suspension of the Ferrari does the CS no favors.

The overall RS effect then becomes distinct from any other 911 – when accelerating, your brain convinces you that a rear-engined car’s nose will point skyward, but the massive aero forces depress the front antagonistically. Even your normal 40 mph experience becomes baffled: swift lane changes produce palpable, true downforce and the outlandish sensation of feeling the turning-tire sidewall load up at speeds when most people are fiddling with their radio.

Shifting the CS is exhilaratingly thoughtless, with each tug of the right paddle producing a violent neck jolt before shoving you into the next ratio. Meanwhile the Porsche exploits a precise shifter whose action is facilitated by double clutching to get your point across. The RS becomes the strict, overbearing parent, rewarding you for getting it right but never flattering your obtuse, maladroit inputs. The Stradale is the slightly askew daredevil uncle whose breathless lead you follow at your own peril. It will go fast whether you like it or not, shirking responsibility in favor of outlandish thrill, commanding you more than the other way around. More a consequence of paddle versus gearstick, the RS allows you to hill peek: waiting to merge onto an uphill street, where you would struggle to avoid smelling sautéed clutch in the Stradale, the Porsche can rest at the engage/disengage point of its left pedal for you to finesse your way slowly over the hill. You are in complete control.

The Stradale still feels more of a sensory overload despite being seven years the RS.2’s junior. On paper, and on brass tacks, however, the Porsche is certainly the faster car, the in-gear accelerative advantages from second to third and third to fourth undeniably obvious. Second to third, particularly, is the zenith of the RS’s talents, the cusp at which you become amazed on the way up and on the way down. Revving the throttle on upshifts needs to be a display of calculated restraint, as you clutch in, strive for third gear and blip the right pedal just enough to keep the needle dancing while your feet do the same. Downshifts can be life-changing if you get them right, and double-clutching becomes second nature from third to second; rest the ball of your foot on the middle pedal, steady your left hand on the steering wheel while clutch goes in, flick the stubby gearlever from third into neutral, and let off the clutch. The next part needs to happen in one motion, a blur: press the brake pedal harder, using the right side of your foot to roll off the gas pedal, clutch in and sweep the gearstick into the second gear cubbyhole and catch the bite point before the needle can move too far counterclockwise. This ritual becomes intoxicating, while the Stradale demonstrates its own brand of hypnotism. Downshift-brake-throttle, brake-downshift-throttle, throttle-throttle-throttle, it all works. Every corner becomes a dare of late-braking, a test of your resolve that will surely wilt before the Stradale’s.

So the CS becomes point and shoot, all go or all stop, and you are wise not to try a shade in between the two. It is this ease of on/off use that is a result not only of its F1 paddles but its effortless midrange ability, insulting your intelligence and confounding the rules you had grown up learning: high revving, wailing V8s are supposed to kick your ass in the 7000s, not the 4000s. The RS’s lesson is to flow, both arms and both feet needing to distribute the tasks seamlessly or your passenger will know you are doing something stupid. It can go ballistic too: snatching higher gears as fast as you dare, uniting the back of the throttle pedal with the firewall – but you still have to employ your other faculties in unison to get to that point.

On the road the Stradale makes the bigger impression on passers-by. In the racial profiling of cars, when audiences see a bright red, obnoxiously deafening Italian sports car with a tiny rectangular yellow badge on its hood they simply assume it is a Ferrari, stereotypes be praised. Whether or not people want to admit it, the typecast of the Ferrari is shrill, obvious, and in your face. The RS effect is more slow burn; people may recognize it is a Porsche at first, but it is only after a confluence of different elements is noticed – stickers, scarlet air intake, aluminum wing struts – that the observer’s eyebrows raise before reaching for their cell phone camera.

Off the road and parked beside each other you smile at the contrasting colors while the cars tingle with the sounds of cooling metal. The effervescence of Stradale’s Rosso Scuderia paintwork makes you re-evaluate your pallete so that this is red, and everything else is erroneous – it is arterial blood moving blindingly fast to deliver oxygen to your tissues. The Cup Car-white purity of the RS 3.8 harkens back to its narrow bodied, 1973 grandfather, while its Guards Red wheels look slightly sinister next to the strident, optic nerve piercing Formula 1-red Ferrari. Imagine a polarizing filter has been placed over your eyes to remove the Stradale’s orange suggestions – the RS’s wheels are venous blood drained of its oxygen, becoming darker and more brooding.
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In every respect Ferrari and Porsche have made compelling arguments for their lightweight cases. The RS reminds you every single second about its past, informed by almost fifty years of defying the edicts of basic engine layout. The Stradale, even in its timeslot from 2004, was clairvoyant and steadfast in its ability to look ahead, promoting its most aggressive F1 transmission and overtly belligerent Venturi tunnels to broadcast to the world that they were and still are looking ahead. They simply expect everyone else to follow.

This comparison could never have a champion because there are too many equally valid reasons to exalt and venerate both cars. In the end you’re left wondering how they both could have gotten it so right in such a disparate manner, and you are excited at the prospect of continuing to figure it out. While your epinephrine-soaked experience in the Stradale will be dominated by stark, intrepid details, you will stitch together every element of the GT3 RS experience into a single haunting emotional amalgamation. The Stradale will make your eyes swell from the blood rushing to your head. But the RS will almost certainly get under your skin.

Ryan Montoya
8/24/10
Teamspeed Article - Battle of the Lightweights - a set on Flickr

YouTube - RS pulling up next to Turbo
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Great write up Ryan. Love the pictures, don't forget about me next time.

 

Thanks man, will you be around this weekend?

 

Yes I will be.

 

Let me know if you guys get together this weekend. I'm not kart racing in NH and should be free.

 

^^ where in NH do you kart race?

 

I LOVE the old graphics you have on your car looks so much better. Nice pictures. Rep.

 

I'll definitely PM you guys if I get this weekend off.

 

Cool ! I like both of them! Nice collections!