DrJay

Ferrari started with the F40 and 288GTO IIRC...

Fadi1

And did not continue it for a reason I assume. We're are talking about main stream cars

brake dust

No turbo competitors in those races - ACO tech regulations. FIA has a different set off BOP - that's why you see turbos and carbon fiber tubs. The grids today have very few 911s. The 991 RSR has a fantastic suspension - hopefully they can win it again at Le Mans.

GreenLantern

Says who?

Tacet-Conundrum

That is what I don't get?! Porsche Justifies raising the prices on the 911, 991, by saying they were going to take the car Up-Market... really, beyond a redesign on exterior and interior its not any better of of higher quaility and it's not like you'regetting an umbrella that fits in the side of door when you open it.

Yet the GT3 managed to fall through the cracks of whatever and remain a great value relatively speaking, compared to other cars of similar magnitude.

Petevb

They race in a "performance balanced" class. This means that if they are too quick they are slowed down and vice versa. Thus their performance is largely down to lobbying, and the teams racing them down to costs that are artificially controlled by manufacture subsidies. In this environment exactly what conclusions do you hope to draw?
I don't agree with the idea that 500 hp is a fundamental limit. In fact Mezgers are now being built by the aftermarket in the 4.2-4.4 liter range and nearing 550 hp in street guise, and there is nothing preventing them from being more reliable than anything that left the factory recently. I agree we have seen reliability issues, but I'd argue these are not the result of engineering fundamentals. Instead they have far more to do with the low volume nature of the GT motors, the corresponding limits on testing and development budgets, and target durability standards on the low side for what's required for track use. One could have suggested that the Mezger had reached its potential any time over the last 50 years, but that's still not the case. Today I believe the new GT3 motor signals the factory's intent to continue developing and increasing output.

Keep in mind that GT3s have been shaped by strict budgets. They originally existed to homologate motorsports components, and the street cars were lucky enough to raid the racing parts bin. The race motors themselves were budget limited in a different way, dictated by Porsche's philosophy of making a profit on everything, and the street motors got to add just enough to make the motors streetable.

The result is a hugely effective package, but one with a number of issues. Failures on the 4.0s, things like oil pumps, clutch plates, freeze plugs and cam adjusters, etc, are things that would be fairly straightforward to address with higher standards and a more extensive testing program. Unfortunately the budget required for this is probably hard to come by within Porsche: motor development is expensive, and they are spreading the cost over a small number of cars. Other manufacturer's cars with bespoke motors are either built in higher volumes, are at higher price points, or don't need to pay for themselves.

The Mezger street cars were made more affordable by cost sharing with motorsports, but this came with compromises in component cost, weight, etc. Addressing those compromises either requires expensive components (like the RSR's lightweight alternator and water circulation) or a virtually clean sheet design.

The 991 GT3 went with the latter, and in doing so I believe showed Porsche's future commitment to the normally aspirated motor. This path came with huge development expense compared to simply tweaking an existing motorsports engine for street use. The bespoke head alone could have exceeded previous GT3 engine development budgets, and that's before real-world testing in customer cars uncovered issues that caused the project cost to balloon further.

You don't become the most profitable car company in the world by sinking this kind of money into dead-end projects, and it's the opposite of Porsche's philosophy. The CGT's V10 was a derivative of a Le Mans LMP 1 racer, technology which evolved into the LMP 2 Spyder's V8, then the 918 Hybrid's V8, finally coming full circle back to LMP 1 in the form of the 919 Hybrid's turbo V4. Porsche doesn't do on-offs.

Thus the 991 GT3 motor was developed with a plan. The Mezger doubled in size and quadrupled in power over 50 years, and while I'm sure this motor doesn't have that type of headroom, it was obviously designed with quite a bit. Why else invest in the cost and complexity of finger-rocker cams? The new GT3 makes peak power below the RS 4.0's old redline, and those cams worked just fine. However if you'd like to exceed the current normally aspirated street car maximum of ~132 hp/ liter, more aggressive cams and even higher revs are the only way to do it.

It seems clear that the factory has given themselves a new normally aspirated platform for next few years, and I'd bet that they had future expansion and eventually getting to at least 550 hp in mind. Yes there have been teething issues, I suspect a direct result of Porsche's budget philosophy, but this doesn't mean development won't continue.
While I agree there are advantages to turbo motors they are perhaps not as clear cut as you might imagine, especially for sports cars. The highest power to weight ratio motors are still normally aspirated. Their throttle response is still better, and just yesterday Toyota's LMP 1 3.7 liter normally aspirated V8 beat Porsche's 2.0 liter turbo 4 around Le Mans by over a second when both were limited to an identical amount of fuel. Meanwhile Toyota's normally aspirated Prius still has the most efficient gas engine on the road. Thus while smaller turbo motors are one path to reducing fleet average fuel consumption, they are certainly not the only or arguably even the best one. Even if it was, should the GT3, built in ridiculously low volumes, have reducing fleet consumption as its main priority?

Macca

Peter & Spencer. Love the debate. Both parties bringing excellent points to the table, FASTLANE from more of an on the ground race/track perspective and Peter looking at the holistic engineering paradigm.

Peters email is very interesting. These days we are all doom and gloom around here but before the engine debacle started my views were similar to Peters in that I had been told there was a Motorsports development program for the 9A1 under-way and the GT3/RS engine would be the basis for this (as previously stated I do not believe for a moment the new 991 GT3RS will be a turbo engined car). Its really easy to loose sign after such a disappointment as the 991 GT3 engine issue to write this whole engineering feast off - but of course if we are pragmatic what Pete says is infact likely to be true. The only caveat is that the current issues with the production car may have impacted PAGs product road map a little for their Motorsports program (accelerated or decelerated who knows).

Fastlanes comments about race shops struggling to get over 500 reliable hp from the 3.8 in racing config conform to my other readings, however a dedicated and skilled race shop can do this if budget is not an issue. The factory are building to a price as Pete says.

I only know one 4.0 owner and only 2 x 4.0L RS cars were imported to my country. The car I know has had a number of recall issues relating to the engine and some of them involved quite alot of work (manifold etc). I understand that there have been issues where replacement engines have been installed in UK, USA and Au markets - so out of such a small production run you can see that on a % basis even the almighty Mezger 4.0RS is not infallible.

Mike in CA

Very interesting and astute commentary, Pete. You should be writing for Panorama, or similar....

Nick

Pete's post was very informative. He provided information I have not read anywhere else.

What troubles me about his post is Porsche's penchant for reducing cost which directly impacted GT3 engine development. Maybe I have been living under a mushroom but I believed Porsche would not stint on costs when it came to performance. That is eye opening and some what disappointing.

brake dust

Remains to be seen if the teams were showing their hands a the Le Mans test day? Believe the only thing we could ascertain is flow rate and not fuel "economy" (absolute number of laps each variant will achieve). That's what makes endurance racing interesting

Petevb

I understand, but I look at it pragmatically. Porsche is in an unfair fight: the GT3 is competing against cars like the Vette and GT-R that clearly are not required to maintain the same profit margins it is. Given this they are doing a hell of a job.

Porsche can clearly build some of the best "no limits" motors, but they are hugely expensive: I look with envy at the 2 hp per pound 918 motor as an example of what Porsche can do when it wants to. Put a similar engine in the GT3, however, and it would probably kill the car: you'd need to charge 458 prices.

Instead the GT3 has been such a huge bargain (relative to the rest of Porsche's line, anyway) because it's able to do so much with what's available. It's a factory "tuner" car: a suspension kit and a legalized race motor they had on the shelf, combined to make an epic package. And for 95% of customers it was more car than they would ever need.

They could engineer it for that last 5% and make it more bulletproof, but it'd raise the prices for everyone. Should they? Debatable. They had more expensive motorsports parts on the shelf, the oil pump for example, that would have made the 4.0s more durable... at a price. But there were already howls at the sticker price of the 4.0, and they had trouble selling the last few (difficult to believe now). And where do you draw the line, the top 5%? The top 2%?

What ends the discussion with the new car for me, however, is the warranty. It's no longer an "off the shelf" reused motorsports motor, the on paper performance specs are better, and use it virtually however you'd like and they'll fix it. So while they still need to walk a fine price/ performance line they'll now stand behind it 100%. That shows a level of commitment they were not previously willing to make. Seems a very good way to make the tradeoff...
The new rules limit both max fuel rate and max consumption over the whole lap, so the Porsche and Toyota will run the same distance before stops. That said it's virtually certain no one was fully showing their hand, so it will certainly still be interesting come race day.

brake dust

Believe it is based on the average of 3 laps but not to exceed a max fuel rate at anytime. :-)

Petevb

Right. So how is it that the cars will be running different numbers of laps in the race before they stop, or? I think you're thinking of previous years, before the rules changed... This year number of laps before refueling is the one thing we know for certain.

Nick

Pete, based on your analysis there may be a silver lining for us consumers. What happened to the GT3 engine and the costs associated with its replacement, could cause Porsche to me more willing to eliminate the 5% tradeoff.

By my reckoning, Porsche's approach with the 991GT3 is close to the Ferrari model. Build them as well as you can without extensive testing and deal with the failures if they occur through warranty claims. Hopefully, Porsche may have learned its lesson and be willing to spend a little more and charge more (FWIW, most of us GT3 buyers would have been willing to pay more to avoid what has happened to us) to provided a reliable car which performs to Porsche standards.

Petevb

My arms length read is as follows.

What happened with the current GT3 motor was a combination of three things: 1. Budget limitations, 2. Not using the motor in the Cup cars and 3. Bad luck.

1. Budget limitations: I believe that the test budget was increased many times over for this motor, but it still wasn't in proportion to the size of the task. Consider the difference between "tweaking" an existing version of the most race-proven motor of all time, changing only around 5-10%, vs. starting over with an entirely new motor that pushes boundaries across the board- finger follower cams, higher rpm, etc. And it still needed to be built on a budget. It was hugely ambitious, and to catch all potential teething problems need an equal program for testing, volume test builds and more. The approach required seems completely out of scale with previous GT cars.
2. This could have been avoided if the engines were run in Cup cars last year, as those would have been part of the test program and presumably caught the issues earlier. Clearly this was desirable, also for marketing, though it might have been impractical- would we have any Cup cars left? In any case, loss of that part of the "test program" made the challenge much harder.
3. Luck. When you push the limits, things break. Sometimes they are small and easy, sometimes they are big and hard. This was unfortunately the latter. If you don't break things you're not pushing, and no amount of testing can catch everything.

Porsche will have a harder time using the "Ferrari model", as you call it, mainly because (not to knock Ferrari) Porsche's average customer likely drives more miles and uses the car harder. If everyone tracks their new GT3s consistently Porsche could be in trouble.

One my potential takeaway from this experience, thinking out loud, is that Porsche needs to change in their business model. Porsche seems the only large manufacture that thinks their halo models and motorsports programs are supposed to maintain profit margins. Counting every penny like this once kept Porsche alive, but today it could do the opposite. Profits from the hundreds of halo models and Cup cars is nearly immaterial to the virtual juggernaut Porsche has become, but the publicity from these cars, both positive and negative, casts a massive shadow as we have seen. Porsche can't afford public debacles like the new GT3 engine disaster, but neither can it afford to drop those cars from the lineup, or they will over time lose credibility (and us). It seems something needs to give, and to me that seems to be profit on certain models... But what do I know?