Porsche 911s are, as the young people say, built differently. It applies to the decades-old classics and it also applies to the modern examples. Take the incoming 911 GT3 for example. To ensure the engine of its latest and greatest track-ready 911 can withstand years of abuse at high speeds, Porsche says the new GT3 has run nearly 3,100 miles continuously at 300 mph, stopping only to refuel .
That’s nearly 17 hours of continuous driving at 186 mph and unsurprisingly, Porsche did it in what is probably one of the few places you can do something like this, the big, round Nardò ring in Italy. The track is 12.5 kilometers long, which means that the GT3 has completed almost 400 laps. Porsche says the car had to do this “flawlessly” before meeting its stringent durability requirements.
The carmaker also says the car took 160 hours in the wind tunnel to get the aerodynamics just right. “The new 911 GT3 generates 50 percent more downforce than its predecessor [124 mph] simply ex works. In the setting with maximum downforce, the increase is a whopping more than 150 percent, ”said Porsche aerodynamics engineer Mathias Roll in a press release.
Despite what felt like years of rumors claiming this new generation GT3 would be turbocharged, the track-specific 992 will stick with a naturally aspirated, 502 horsepower 4.0-liter flat-six spinning to a glorious 9,000 rpm. Essentially the same engine as the 911 GT3 Cup car, this engine apparently spent a total of 22,000 hours on the test rig simulating track driving, much of which was with the throttle fully open. Whatever owners have in store for their GT3s, it probably will.