MaxLTV

So I finally took it to the track. It was Sonoma Raceway, Hook On Driving event. I did not get it a fair workout, probably 7/10 of my ability at most and lees than that of the car’s ability. It was raining, and the track was very wet and slippery, with dirt on most track outs and apexes, so I was very cautious. Also short-shifting a bit because of brake-in. But I got to page that gave the car good enough workout.

Some impressions (using e90 M3 as baseline):

• 1. First impression - it’s very easy to rotate car with throttle, especially in the wet. I did it on in Turn 3 of the first lap, without even intending to ☺. Stability control did not interfere until I was good 30-40 degrees sideways and counter steering like crazy. Anyway, it was at almost at parking lot speed, so just what I needed to wake up. But seriously, rotating car by giving it more throttle feels nice and is very controllable. I can see why Chriss Harris liked it so much ☺. I’d say even more so than in M3, because in M3 you have to punch it, or otherwise it will under steer. Here I could add it in a more controlled way and still get desired over steer. Rotating with lift, on the other hand, is snappy and much more abrupt than in M3. So it’s still 911-like in this sense.
• 2. The engine does not let go before the red line, even though the torque curve says otherwise. It keeps pulling very evenly from 6500 to 9000. Feels great, but makes shifting close to red line a challenge. I was shifting 2K short most of the time, but when I tried to time shifts to get it close to redline, it was difficult – short gears, even pull and sound pitch not changing much.
• 3. Steering is great. Very precise.
• 4. Brakes – very confidence-inspiring. I was catching people on braking in many turns first time out in this car!
• 5. Turn in is great, but a bit treacherous. The car turns in readily, but then sometimes under steers right after that. It does not happen at road speeds, only at the edge of traction. I have not figured out what I’m doing wrong there or if that’s the set up.
• 6. Under steer – it’s there. And it comes unpredictably, at least to me. It’s a bit treacherous because the car turns in just fine but then starts to understeer when I’m already committed to the turn, and there very few options to tighten up the arch without spinning. Maybe it’s me doing something wrong or the set up or a combination. But this was scaring the crap out of me and made me drive way below the limit in most places – I just had a feeling that I would plow into the wall when I least expect it. In M3, for comparison, the car just would not turn in if it’s coming in too hot, so I could see the issue early enough, carry brakes a bit deeper and do late turn in – no danger and almost no speed lost. Here the car turns in just fine and then starts plowing. Happened to me at carousel and at turn 2. I need some serious seat time at track without walls or maybe even just skidpad to figure that out. One thing I’ve notices that understeer got worse when front tires got to 34psi – maybe that’s related. I ran pressures that were probably too high because the track dried up during the session and tire temps went up a lot.
• 7. Grip – the grip is insane. I pulled sustained 1.68G in carousel with damp road and 34psi in front tires (36 in rears)!
• 8. Weight transfer – the car is so flat, it’s unbelievable. Several other drivers mentioned that, and some event asked if it’s active suspension. The downside, at least initially, is that it’s more difficult to feel there limit is – I realize I relied on weight transfer for it to some extent, and now I cannot feel it as much. Another negative of less weight transfer is that timing of brake release needs to be much more precise to get the right benefit from trainbraking, Maybe this is what caused my understeer issues.
• 9. Nannies – stability control is very lenient. I could get sideways to the point of needing a deep breath to bring adrenaline down without it interfering. Also, ABS allows inside wheel lock up on trail-braking, so need to be more careful with that. I ran most laps with all on (new car, wet Sonoma, first time there – who can blame me), but also did few laps with traction control only. TC-only mode allows smoking tires a bit on turn exit. Just enough to smell it but not enough to wreck. Could not feel RWS outside of parking area, where it does reduce turning radius.
• 10. Large fuel tank is amazing!
• 11. Exhaust sound is amazing.
• 12. Shifting is unbelievably fast.
• 13. Seats are the only disappointment so far. They are very comfortable for road driving, but do not work for me at all at track. I end up being thrown around like a rag doll and use steering wheel for support, which is lunacy. I feel seats are worth 3-4 seconds per lap for me, if not more, so bad it is. A bigger driver would be in a better position, but still it’s a pain in the lower back, literally. I am looking for aftermarket bucket seat and harness bar now…
• 14. Tires – grip really well, but other than that I did not like them that much. Sometimes they squeal without letting go and sometimes they let go without squealing. Also, grip seemed to change a lot with temperature and pressure. I am not into fiddling with that, so a tire with bigger sweet spot would work better. But my impression is not worth much because conditions and my driving style changed a lot throughout a day, so it may not be a fair evaluation.
• 15. Overall robustness – it was a cold day and I was not driving that fast, but the car did not even break sweat. We’ll see how it goes further, but it’s on another level compared to M3, which I would overheat in 3-5 quick laps on familiar tracks. One strange thing is that brake pedal got a bit softer by the end of the day. I do not think I could overheat brakes – there was not much traction that day, and I did proper cool down laps with no brake use. Strange, but very minor.

So now the plan is:

• 1. More track time plus rides with someone who knows GT3s in general and local tracks.
• 2. Alignment, corner balance and other suspension set up magic. I’m not sure if there is enough knowledge out there to just copy someone’s settings, because I’m not advanced enough to figure this out myself.
• 3. Bucket seats and harness bar. I am actually thinking about just one driver seat to keep the car more passenger-friendly for the road. I am not driving passengers at more than 8/10 on track anyway. Is that a good idea?

orthojoe

Nice to see a track write up from a local. Thanks for the post!

24Chromium

From all you describe, it sounds like your complaint of understeer was caused by going in too hot. That coupled with a damp track. Neither of my 997.2 GT cars understeered like the BMW M3's I owned and tracked. The GT cars made the M's seem like trucks!

To give us some idea of your abilities and how hard you were pushing, post your best lap time and track config.

neanicu

Thanks for the review Max!

Macca

Hi Max. Great write up thanks.

Im not sure if you have driven a 911 on the track before now, so excuse me if I take some liberties in assuming not.

Driving a 911 fast is quite different than driving a car of traditional layout as you know. The 991 GT3 exhibits less under-steer than any previous generation of 911. However you still have to drive it like a 911 of old to some degree.

I agree with you that the car can snap over-steer quickly. After exploring this on the road (I never exceeded 1.2 G lateral forces) Ive concluded the front end is so tractable as to elicit snap oversteer on low temp/traction surfaces when turning in too quickly. Its quite different from my other track car which is a much older 993.

My advice is to take an experience 911 instructor with you around the track next time, even get them to drive first to see what line they take. It will make it far easier to get a feel for the 911s unique style.

I do believe that the 991 GT3 can do with at least another -0.30" front and rear for road and track. The factory -1'.30" is conservative from what I experienced. I run -3'.0 and -2'.30" F/R on the 993 on the track and it works really well with a fraction less front toe. For fast road Tarmax rally I would back that off to 2'.00"-/2'.00" for tyre lonegevity and that where I think Ill start with the 991 Gt3 on track.

Remember driving the 911 on track in the wet is always much different from the dry. Good on you for giving it a go, many would have not had the *****.

Lastly, you simply must accept to play with tyre pressures with the 911. There is no getting away from that. The difference in the front end grip reduces quickly with heat and these tyres will even in cool or wet conditions gain 4-8psi quickly so you need to actively manage the pressures and heat dropping the tyres down before each session. This is critical to the tyres not going off and giving you less traction. Once you get tuned into the chassis and get your cambers set up I would advise softening off the front roll bar at least one notch in order to reduce under-steer further. Thats what the adjustment is there for after all!

Lastly I wouldn't bother with the ESC on the track from here on in. Like you I found the ESC cut in late and on the track you are best to have the car handling progressively and once you have the experience this makes it far easier to catch than when it does unpredictable things, it may also help with longevity of rear pads (due to PTV). Leave TC on if you like....

Just a few notes, meant to be constructive, but its great to hear a real world experience, right now my car is 100km off the coast of Equitorial Guinea!

MaxLTV

I agree that understeer is probably from going in too hot. But where M3 made it easier was that if I went in too hot, it told me about it before I turned it. This GT3 turns in like everything is awesome, but then let's go. That's very unfamiliar behavior to me. But it was not every turn - maybe one turn per 1-2 laps. Just enough to make me paranoid a bit.

The best lap I recorded was 1:57.3 in the long configuration. But I would not use the time as measure of car's or my ability - I was driving a 911 for the first time ever, in my first and only session when I could try dry line, on a new to me still damp track with dirt on several corners and puddles on track outs, using limited rev range, and I could not even follow anyone fast to copy because my group did not have faster cars. Looking at the datalog, I can see I was not pushing at all at S-es, had wrong line in 3, 3a, 8 and some other places, etc. But I got it to sustained limit of traction in carousel (T6) and close to it in T11 and few other spots. So I got some feel of the car but not much hang of the track.

For reference, I did 65+ track days so far, and on many I drove for two groups (instructor and one of student group sessions) to make them really count :-). So I'm not a pro by any means, but I have enough experience to understand what happens with the car. Granted, 911 driving is new to me, so some of my impressions may look naive for sure.

I'll go to Thunderhill on Sunday and will have more from there. Thunderhill looks much simpler, so I may get a more thorough impression.

Macca

Max. You will pick it up quickly. As an initial impression its very hard to say if at least half of what you are experiencing in new to you "911 stuff". Once you have been schooled in 911 it may well seem to make a bit more sense. Its quite facinating to see at our local track where we have a long speeper which tightens, how a novice in a 911 will approach that loine even if they have been thrrashing their e30 M3 around teh track for years. When you jump in teh car with them and show them that its actually a double apex they almost always laugh and say they would never ever had thought to try that., The 911 is AWESOME on the brakes and MASSIVE getting on the gas out of a corner, it just requires a totally different attitude mid corner but in corners the 911 can be faster than cars with 200 bhp more that are well set up. A double apex attack to a large tightening sweeper makes no sense at all until you understand the dynamics of a 911 (probably less so a 991 GT3 as the under steer is again less inherent).

Enjoy Thunderhill on Sunday,. hopefully its dry and please report back to us how you found the car. I would start with 3-4 psi down on front and rear tyres and you may have to knock them back 2-3psi more during the day.

SamFromTX

Thanks, Max, great write up. Mid corner understeer is a definite, albeit minor, issue with this car. With time, it will be predictable. As Macca said, exiting corners in 911s is massive and with RWS, it is even more so, you will just have to trust the car (in the dry, of course) to see it yourself.

Manifold

Thanks for the detailed write-up. Miscellaneous thoughts:

- The oversteer and understeer characteristics surprise me a bit. When I first started tracking my 997.1 C2S, I found it well behaved and predictable, and it should be more '911ish' than your GT3 since it's a 997. It could be that you're not used to the car, but I'd also check the alignment and keep an eye on tire pressures. Do you have the Michelins or Dunlops? I've done a lot of track days with the Dunlops and, while great on the road, didn't like them on track when pushed hard (not progressive when cold, got greasy too early, had cording problems).

- Being able to feel weight transfer and grip is supposed to be one of the key strengths of a 911, and that's been my experience with various 997 and earlier 911s. Have never tracked a 991, but I hope they haven't dialed out the magic in this GT3 in order to get more speed out of it.

- Good to hear that the PSM is very lenient. That being the case, I'd just leave it on, use it as a safety feature, as intended.

- Can't believe they still don't offer track seats for it in the US! I haven't yet decided if I want the car, but my dealer's next allocation will be mine, and I'm thinking I won't order it until the track seats are available. I wouldn't want to track a car this fast with any vigor without proper seats, harnesses, and HANS. Around here, most clubs require equal seats and restraints for driver and passenger, and I tend to agree with that rule (I'm Safety Chair for my PCA region).

- A little surprised the pedal started getting soft in one day, given that you weren't pushing that hard. Did you have track fluid?

Nizer

Max: Good on you for taking the car out on cold, wet day. Better to explore limits at lower speeds dictated by these conditions than find them at speeds encountered on hot, dry day.

Wouldn't draw many conclusions from your session but a couple quick thoughts to keep in mind next time out.

- As others have stated, alignment and tire pressures will have a big impact on handling.

- Maintenance throttle is your friend. Coasting is a big no no with 911's and will contribute to understeer when allowed to creep in between brake release/turn-in and apex. Get some maintenance throttle in as soon as you release brakes. In general, adding throttle will tighten your line.

- Watch your brake release. It needs to be smooth and should blend seamlessly into maintenance throttle. Most spins I see in 911's are from abrupt brake release at turn-in.

- Relative to your M3 you should be trying to get to throttle earlier and more aggressively. 911's luuuuvvv throttle. A 911 will never be as benign as an M3 at the limit - only so much engineering can do with all that weight hanging off the back - but once you learn to manage the weight distribution it will be your friend.

- If you've got all the above sorted and are still getting understeer at turn entry then next step is to start backing down front sway bar stiffness, but I wouldn't start messing with this until you've logged more seat time.

Have fun.

orthojoe

Are we getting our terminology mixed up here? My understanding is that TC will cut power/throttle, while ESC will use brake intervention to prevent spin out when slip angle is too high.

Therefore, wouldn't it be better to have TC OFF and ESC ON in a track setting, rather than the other way around? You'd rather have control over power, and given that the new ESC systems only turn on when you really need then, it's better to have them on than vice versa.

Macca

OrthoJoe. TC is only a straight line issue. ESC cuts power on the corners. AP recommened driving it ESC off with TC on but I tried it with both off ant its fine.

Manifold. You are never going to buy this car mate LOL. Now the excuses are the seats but many on here seem to be buying it and tracking it. Youve been taking a poke at this car on here since before it was delivered. Max's feedback on here regards the track were honest but far from definitive, most of us have immediately identified the newbie 911 track experience and helped with advise - but your running off taking his report and rephrased in your own words like "hope they haven't dialed out the magic of this GT3 in order to get more speed out of it" . No offence mate but you have put your *** into the seat of this car and drive it. No excuses now, plenty of the around. Try it on the track and see what you think.

Manifold

LOL, I may indeed have the record for fence straddling on this one. Five minutes of test drives on road and track would probably enable me to make up my mind with confidence. Any volunteers in the Mid-Atlantic?

cingulus

Hey, like the OP, I am coming from 3 M3s and 350Z. Can you share some more thoughts on what you mean by a Double Apex?

Thanks,

Shaun

eurotom

OP great right up, hope to see you out there this season.