There’s a new speed demon reigning over Green Hell. Porsche has just set a new lap record for a production vehicle with a manual transmission, that vehicle being a 911 GT3 equipped with the weight-shedding Weissach Package. The stripped German sports car lapped the circuit in 6 minutes and 56 seconds, officially 9.5 seconds faster than the time set by a Dodge Viper ACR in 2017, per Road & Track. However, given that the the ‘Ring’s length has increased by around .14 miles since, the GT3 may actually be closer to 10 seconds faster than the snarling American supercar.
Porsche now gets to claim complete and outright dominance for production vehicles in Green Hell, as a 911 GT2 RS equipped with a Manthey Performance Kit set the record for automatics at 6 minutes and 43 seconds back in 2021. R&T adds more interesting context, explaining that although the manual GT3’s lap was slower than the 6:49.328 lap time put down by an automatic GT3 RS in 2022, it beats a pre-update automatic 992 GT3 by 3.7 seconds.
“More and more customers of the 911 GT3 are opting for the six-speed manual transmission. And more and more often we are asked by these customers how fast a 911 GT3 with manual transmission would be on the Nordschleife,” said Porsche executive Andreas Preuninger.
“We have now answered this question and—although we know that the variant with PDK is significantly faster—drove our lap time with a manual six-speed gearbox. Even without the automated, super-fast and precise gearshifts of the PDK and with a mechanical instead of electronically controlled limited-slip differential, the new 911 GT3 takes around 3.6 seconds off its predecessor with PDK.” Watch the record-breaking lap video above.
