992 GT3 Road Car and Cup Car on Track - Pic Heavy
Discussion
Earlier this month I had the chance to drive the 992 Carrera Cup at Pembrey which I and my friend Danny had exclusive use of for the whole day. This isn't an opportunity that comes up everyday so we didn't need asking twice.
I wanted to compare the real race car to the road going 992 GT3 so drove from Hertfordshire to Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, the night before. We'd booked a hotel a short drive from the circuit so we could be fresh for the experience. It's a solid 4 hour drive on pretty boring motorways for the majority of the journey, something that the GT3 isn't really suited to. Whilst the ride isn't bad, the noise gets very tiring quickly which just adds to the monotony. A great tip I discovered was to utilise the noise cancelling feature of my airpods, even if I wasn't listening to anything - just silence
The next morning we drove down to the circuit to be met by Team Parker Racing who had organised the event for us. Harry King the 2020 Carrera Cup champion was there along with the team principles and engineers who were busy tendering to the car we were to drive as well as a 991.2 Carrera Cup that they had also brought down.
The weather initially looked good, but it didn't take long for the heavens to open and for rain soak the track ready for our first experience of a 500BHP RWD 911 that had neither traction control nor ABS.
We started off with an introduction to the controls of the car which are mounted on the steering wheel and a bank of switches to the right of the main display.
On the steering wheel itself are buttons that are needed often such as, flash the lights, turn on the wipers, change the main display. The bank of switches which are nice and big so you can press them with a gloved finger had the other controls to turn on the main lights, the rain light and driver facing fans. The latter was especially useful on a wet day, for demisting my glasses which I was wearing inside a full face helmet. The attention to detail is really impressive. I've driven modern road cars where less thought has gone into their ergonomics.
I've never driven Pembrey before so I wanted to drive the circuit to get to know the circuit in a car I was familiar with. Harry jumped in the passenger seat of my GT3 and I did a few sighting laps with the master giving me instructions on car positioning around the circuit. I've had several GT3's before but this was the first time I've taken my 992 GT3 on track. I wasn't going to perform any heroics in my pride and joy with a racing supremo in the passenger seat, but it was clear that the GT3 is far more at home on the track than on the M4.
With a set of wets fitted it was time to try the real thing. There's some really obvious differences between the GT3 road car and the 992 Cup Car. First of all it's left hand drive. Secondly, it's got a manual gearbox, albeit robotised with paddles on the wheel. It still has a clutch though which is only used for pulling off and coming to a complete standstill.
I was warned that the clutch was just like any other racing type, either in or out with very little in between. I thought I'd stall it but in fact it was far from the worst I'd ever driven and I managed not to embarrass myself as I pulled away from the garage along the pits. You immediately notice the noise from the gearbox - that racing car whine from straight cut gears that sounds like a 70's car in reverse gear.
As I joined the circuit along the main straight I remembered the guidance that Harry had given me around braking into the bends. The 911 being rear-engined needed lots of trail braking to the apex in order to keep the weight over the front wheels and avoid understeering off the circuit. This meant that braking needed to be later than I was used to but only with the wheels pointing straight ahead to prevent either upsetting the car or unevenly loading up the front causing one of the wheels to lock up. Remember that this car had no ABS so locking up the wheels, especially in the wet, was a distinct possibility. As it's not always obvious that you've locked a wheel up (apart from the smoke from burning rubber!) the dash lights up purple to tell the driver that a wheel has locked - something that I don't remember happening all day when I was driving.
The cup car is quite highly geared and needed first selecting in the tighter corners, but you quickly change up in the wet so as not to overload the tyres and induce wheelspin - there's no traction control to keep things under control. The gearbox is fabulously entertaining with gearshifts far more brutal than the road cars PDK, which is silky smooth in comparison. I thought being left hand drive would take some getting used to, but after a lap or two I didn't notice at all - a transition that would have been much harder had the car been fully manual with a gear stick.
After half an hour I came in and as the track had just begun to dry a little I decided to take my GT3 out again with my newly found confidence and familiarity of Pembrey circuit. I could now really feel the difference between the cars. The most obvious difference is the grip caused between driving on road tyres and a set of racing wets. The GT3 was really moving over the circuit tending to understeer much more than the cup car. Hardly surprising. The PDK felt like a lazy auto after getting out of the cup car with it's seamless shifts between ratios. Where I couldn't tell any difference was a power difference between the two, both accelerating hard with that flat 6 howl as you head towards the rev limiter.
https://thumbsnap.com/i/EBw4qF4A.mp4
After lunch and now with a mostly dry track the team fitted a set of slicks to the car. Now I've never driven a car with slicks and by the concerned faces of the team and constant chat about whether we could get enough heat into the tyres I was becoming somewhat concerned. I left the pits pretty gingerly and spent the first lap weaving across the circuit like it was the green flag lap of one of my Caterham races, breaking hard into corners and trying to get some heat into the tyres through understeer. After a couple of laps I got pretty confident in the car and by half a dozen laps the grip round corners was absolutely astonishing. More than anything else it was the mechanical grip that separated the Cup car from the road going GT3.
All too quickly the sunset over Pembrey and the best day of my motoring life was over. I'd driven a GT3 back to back with next year's cup car, a dream come true.
I wanted to compare the real race car to the road going 992 GT3 so drove from Hertfordshire to Pembrey, Carmarthenshire, the night before. We'd booked a hotel a short drive from the circuit so we could be fresh for the experience. It's a solid 4 hour drive on pretty boring motorways for the majority of the journey, something that the GT3 isn't really suited to. Whilst the ride isn't bad, the noise gets very tiring quickly which just adds to the monotony. A great tip I discovered was to utilise the noise cancelling feature of my airpods, even if I wasn't listening to anything - just silence
The next morning we drove down to the circuit to be met by Team Parker Racing who had organised the event for us. Harry King the 2020 Carrera Cup champion was there along with the team principles and engineers who were busy tendering to the car we were to drive as well as a 991.2 Carrera Cup that they had also brought down.
The weather initially looked good, but it didn't take long for the heavens to open and for rain soak the track ready for our first experience of a 500BHP RWD 911 that had neither traction control nor ABS.
We started off with an introduction to the controls of the car which are mounted on the steering wheel and a bank of switches to the right of the main display.
On the steering wheel itself are buttons that are needed often such as, flash the lights, turn on the wipers, change the main display. The bank of switches which are nice and big so you can press them with a gloved finger had the other controls to turn on the main lights, the rain light and driver facing fans. The latter was especially useful on a wet day, for demisting my glasses which I was wearing inside a full face helmet. The attention to detail is really impressive. I've driven modern road cars where less thought has gone into their ergonomics.
I've never driven Pembrey before so I wanted to drive the circuit to get to know the circuit in a car I was familiar with. Harry jumped in the passenger seat of my GT3 and I did a few sighting laps with the master giving me instructions on car positioning around the circuit. I've had several GT3's before but this was the first time I've taken my 992 GT3 on track. I wasn't going to perform any heroics in my pride and joy with a racing supremo in the passenger seat, but it was clear that the GT3 is far more at home on the track than on the M4.
With a set of wets fitted it was time to try the real thing. There's some really obvious differences between the GT3 road car and the 992 Cup Car. First of all it's left hand drive. Secondly, it's got a manual gearbox, albeit robotised with paddles on the wheel. It still has a clutch though which is only used for pulling off and coming to a complete standstill.
I was warned that the clutch was just like any other racing type, either in or out with very little in between. I thought I'd stall it but in fact it was far from the worst I'd ever driven and I managed not to embarrass myself as I pulled away from the garage along the pits. You immediately notice the noise from the gearbox - that racing car whine from straight cut gears that sounds like a 70's car in reverse gear.
As I joined the circuit along the main straight I remembered the guidance that Harry had given me around braking into the bends. The 911 being rear-engined needed lots of trail braking to the apex in order to keep the weight over the front wheels and avoid understeering off the circuit. This meant that braking needed to be later than I was used to but only with the wheels pointing straight ahead to prevent either upsetting the car or unevenly loading up the front causing one of the wheels to lock up. Remember that this car had no ABS so locking up the wheels, especially in the wet, was a distinct possibility. As it's not always obvious that you've locked a wheel up (apart from the smoke from burning rubber!) the dash lights up purple to tell the driver that a wheel has locked - something that I don't remember happening all day when I was driving.
The cup car is quite highly geared and needed first selecting in the tighter corners, but you quickly change up in the wet so as not to overload the tyres and induce wheelspin - there's no traction control to keep things under control. The gearbox is fabulously entertaining with gearshifts far more brutal than the road cars PDK, which is silky smooth in comparison. I thought being left hand drive would take some getting used to, but after a lap or two I didn't notice at all - a transition that would have been much harder had the car been fully manual with a gear stick.
After half an hour I came in and as the track had just begun to dry a little I decided to take my GT3 out again with my newly found confidence and familiarity of Pembrey circuit. I could now really feel the difference between the cars. The most obvious difference is the grip caused between driving on road tyres and a set of racing wets. The GT3 was really moving over the circuit tending to understeer much more than the cup car. Hardly surprising. The PDK felt like a lazy auto after getting out of the cup car with it's seamless shifts between ratios. Where I couldn't tell any difference was a power difference between the two, both accelerating hard with that flat 6 howl as you head towards the rev limiter.
https://thumbsnap.com/i/EBw4qF4A.mp4
After lunch and now with a mostly dry track the team fitted a set of slicks to the car. Now I've never driven a car with slicks and by the concerned faces of the team and constant chat about whether we could get enough heat into the tyres I was becoming somewhat concerned. I left the pits pretty gingerly and spent the first lap weaving across the circuit like it was the green flag lap of one of my Caterham races, breaking hard into corners and trying to get some heat into the tyres through understeer. After a couple of laps I got pretty confident in the car and by half a dozen laps the grip round corners was absolutely astonishing. More than anything else it was the mechanical grip that separated the Cup car from the road going GT3.
All too quickly the sunset over Pembrey and the best day of my motoring life was over. I'd driven a GT3 back to back with next year's cup car, a dream come true.
thanks for taking the time to post that. A great experience 
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