This is curious. Porsche’s driving instructors are the best of the best and right now I’m driving around the full Silverstone Grand Prix circuit trying to keep up with their chief instructor. The best of the best of the best. I’m in the new 911 GT3 RS which is wearing Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres, which are very much dry weather track day tyres. And it is raining. Hard.
Ahead I watch Porsche’s finest test driver managing his GT3. It looks like he’s in a fight to the death with an alligator. It thrashes one way, he hauls it the other. Together they slither and slide about, writhing around in an intimate embrace of the most perilous kind. I’ve followed lots of these guys around lots of tracks over the years, but I’ve never seen one work this hard. Not even close.
But here’s the thing: I’m just sitting there. My 911 can sit on the wildly yawing tail of his 911, without so much as a shrug of the hips. In places I’m actually having to hold back to avoid running right into the back of him. Something, clearly, is very wrong. And it’s not difficult to see what. Two little letters distinguish our GT3s: an ‘R’ and an ‘S’. I have them, he does not.
