Adrenaline Pump

The story of the Porsche Carrera Cup started some 20 years ago with the creation of the 911 Carrera 2 Cup 1989. This was a one-make race series intended for the so-called “gentleman racers”, but it has since grown to be a very professional series with a level of competition s0 close that even privateers can have a crack at the podium.

Ever since the first 996-based GT3 Cup Car, some 1,400 race cars have been built at the rate of 200 units a year. While motor racing tends to be a marketing-driven activity in car companies, Porsche’s Motorsport Division is fully integrated into the company’s research and development department. Since 2006, the motorsports cars are built alongside road cars, including the normal GT3 at Zuffenhausen.

Where they used to expend their effort putting together entire race cars at their Weissach facility, the Motorsport engineers and technicians now focus on important tllings like loading the software and tweaking the suspension or aero settings for the racers.

It wasn’t just for cost effectiveness that Porsche’s race cars are made alongside the road cars. On top of sharing the expertise of the motorsports engineers with the rest of the company, building the racers at Zuffenhausen ensures that the Cup Cars bear the same exacting quality as the road cars. (You only have to look at the cars in the paddock to see how shoddy track and race cars can be!)

This is the new 911 GT3 Cup Car and it’s about 0.3 second per kilometre quicker than the outgoing model. At Hockenheim, the advantage translates to around 1.5 seconds a lap. This is achieved by improvements in the engine, aerodynamics and overall handling.

The biggest factor for the improvement, though, comes from the new 3.8-litre flat-6 derived from the GT3 RS and rated for 450bhp.

As in the GT3 RS, the engine still relies on port injection but the Motorsport Division is looking into direct injection (featured on the current Carrera models) for the next generation race car. The main brief for the Cup engine is not so much maxing 0ut horsepower but to achieve a wide spread of torque.

This particular engine characteristic is really a function of the rules for the race series. To promote fair play, the gear ratios are fixed (among other things) and this set may not always be ideal for every circuit in the series. A broader spread of torque will allow the driver to have the legs to pull out of slow corners in higher gear rather than stretch out in a lower one, thereby being quicker everywhere else.
Believe it or not, the Cup Car is equipped with a catalytic converter as standard. By race ear standards, the exhaust system is also fairly quiet – not that the driver will really notice when ensconced in the cockpit.

Strapped int0 the OMP carbon-fibre seat with the five-point harness, the driver is assaulted with a cacophony of noises. The sticky race tyres, rose-jointed suspension and straight-cut gears of the sequential box make a tremendous din that drowns out the decibels from the exhaust.

Key to the Cup Car’s bag of tricks is the high G-force that it can deliver. The on­ board telemetry shows that the car can pull nearly 1.5g during braking and cornering, But the numbers fail to adequately describe the actual sensation of having one and a half times of one’s body weight squashing the rib cage and hip bone.

One really needs to be fit for this sort of driving activity and I know I will pay dearly over the next few days for my “decadent” lifestyle.

Thankfully, the steering is sufficiently assisted to make piloting the Cup Car a relative breeze. This is until you realise that a regular, normal three-point turn takes five or six attempts to complete, due to the huge turning circle. Best to make a mental note about this since it makes it harder to collect the car after a spin.

It’s actually genuinely difficult to spin this 911. It seems that the engineers have nailed down everything needed to curb the dreaded “pendulum effect” that comes with the 911’s rear engine placement.

The level of tactility from being strapped into the centre of a deep bucket seat is just marvellous. You truly become one with the car. The steel rose-jointed suspension mounts transmit every nuance from the road, so the feedback is felt not just at the seat of the pants but through your entire body.

Part of the changes introduced on the new car include increasing the width of the alloy wheels (up half an inch in front and a full inch behind) without altering tyre size. This stretches the tyres’ sidewalls to assume a more than vertical profile. This has the effect of stiffening the sidewalls without actually increasing tyre pressure (capped at 2bar for race temperature).

In fighting trim, the Cup Car weighs in at 1,200kg. The extra 50kg over its predecessor comes from the adoption of the wider bodyshell taken from the GT3 RS road car. The penalty is more than mitigated by the better dynamics that comes with the wider chassis.

Just point the car and it jumps into position without yaw nor roll – that’s how responsive this lightweight racer is. Even more remarkable is the stopping ability of these endurance-regulation, large diameter steel disc brakes. They use the floating disc design and fade-free  even at race pace, negating the thermal advantage of the pricey ceramic Supercup-spec items except for the 20kg saving in unsprung weight.

It’s amazing how late one can brake for a corner in the Cup Car and still get away with it. Having the weight of the engine hanging out the back may not be helpful during a spin, but it’s perfect during braking, as the mass enables the rear brakes to work as hard as the ones in front, thus giving nearly 50 per cent more stopping power over a front-engine, front-drive car.

Brake bias is near-perfect and non-adjustable. for the purpose od fair play, the brake pad material, damper setting, spring rates, engine power and gear ratios (mentioned earlier) are fixed. This ensures that every competitor gets essentially the same car. Winning a race then is mostly down to the driver’s skill.

Open to the driver for fine-tuning are the suspension and aerodynamics. The suspension is fully adjustable for toe, castor, camber, ride height and corner weight balance. Even roll stiffness is adjustable via a 7-position, blade-type end on both sides of the roll bar. The inflation can also be adjusted to further tweak hadling characteristics.

The newrake-adjustable rear aerofoil, is 24mm wider than the old car’s. Little seems to have changed up front, besides a new spoiler that’s 15mm closer to the tarmacand a pair of carbon gurney flaps set just before the wheel arches to help alter airflow around the wheels without increasing overall drag. The nett effect of the aerodynamic tweaks is an increase in downforce by 15 per cent.

Grip levels are phenomenal, but the new Cup Car also serves up more benign handling. Melding easy handling with better lap times is not an easy task, but it was considered essential that the Cup Car is easy enough to not intimidate newbies while still being thrilling to exixting Cup Car clients. It all contributes to making the racing in the Carrera Cup close and competitive.

Handling is quite nearly telephatic. All you need to do is calibrate the ultimate levels with the first unintentional 180 degree spin and it becomes all very clear what are the tell-tale sensations to watch out for before reaching the point of no return.

You do have to get the around the fact that this is a thoroughbred race car, so to bring the car anywhere near its limits takes determination and guts, far more than in any road car. The first few times you reach this point will give you the willies because it is the usual sensation just before a spin. However, the GT3 Cup Car is extremely faithful in its response and communication and so one learns not just to live on but to seek out this fine edge. After 10 familiarization laps, it took me a further three hot laps to get my best results out of this car. It is by no means an easy feat, but is most certainly a rewarding one.

At 149,850 Euros, the car costs nearly 20,000 Euros more than the outgoing car, but the running costs over the entire season have been capped at previous levels. This new 2010 car will be enlisted into the Carrera Cup Asia series next year, so current teams ans potential entrants have just a few months to get into the swing of thingsin order to procure and prepare their race cars before mid-April when the new season starts.

Tags: GT3 GT3 Cup Race Porsche Porsche 911