With its new tires, the old Porsche Carrera GT really has some really nice remains

We can’t stop progress. At the start of the 2000s, the Porsche Carrera GT represented absolute excellence among exceptional sports cars in the same way as the Ferrari Enzo. Like all Porsches with an extreme vocation, it had been timed on the Nordschleife with times recorded in 7 minutes and 28 seconds for the fastest attempt ever.

This is almost a minute slower than today’s fastest supercar on the great German circuit (which has evolved slightly in its configuration in the meantime), the Mercedes-AMG One hybrid which managed to run there under the six minutes and 30 seconds a few weeks ago. A modest current 911 GT3 RS, developing 525 horsepower and based on a chassis much less exclusive than that of the 612 horsepower Carrera Gtalso manages to lower the time to 6 minutes and 49 seconds.

With current tires, it goes much faster

But as this new attempt carried out by the German magazine Sport Auto with the help of Porsche driver Jörg Bergmeister proves, this constantly improving performance also owes a lot to the quality of the tires.

It turns out that the Carrera GT is now entitled to much better tires, custom-designed by Michelin. And with a difference of 20 years of technological progress, it runs much harder: 7 minutes and 12 seconds, almost the time of a 2000 horsepower Rimac Nevera.

Certainly, it’s still slower than a heavy 789 horsepower Porsche Taycan Turbo GT and the best supercars of the latest generation do much better than that. But knowing that it was undoubtedly possible to do even better in the conditions of a real “factory” time trial attempt and that the car still gained sixteen seconds, this perfectly illustrates the importance of the tire parameter in this type of race. performance.