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A failure this big could only be engineered by "we are never wrong" Germans. (I can say this because I am part German)
NO $#!+. Ug, talk about miserable experiences, dealing with my German counterparts (i.e. engineers). And I, too, am part German. Great-grandfather was an immigrant from Germany, Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Sauer.
That said, I actually don't have too big of a problem with this. A high pressure oil leak is going to cause problems regardless of how close to the cats the oil pumps are. Cats or not, exhaust systems are hot enough, and the flash points of the best oils out there are in the 250C range. The flash points of the best non-race synthetics (read: factory fill) are in the 180F range. There are plenty of hot enough parts in the engine bay that can ignite oil. Even when the cats are stupid-hot, they aren't more dangerous than the rest of the exhaust system. It reads to me like the root cause is some sort of oil leak. That the proximity of the pump to the cats is so close is likely not really a contributing factor.
Wasn't there someone who just took delivery of a 991 GT3 who is planning on DE-ing it at Road Atlanta during the Club Race? I'd have to seriously think twice about that.