Porsche 911 GT2 RS: Your Last Desire

14 March 2019 Redazione News, Tested

PORSCHE 911 GT2 RS

Words by Alessandro Marrone

Photo by Giorgia Rossi

The GT2 RS is the car you would drive if today was the last day of planet Earth.

GT2 RS, just to suggest that you cannot ask for more than that. It is not a car for the faint of heart, not even for those who strictly live on long-term projects. Let me explain, this wants to massacre self-preservation and make every kilometer as intense as if it would be your last, but not for this bites to betray the trust you will establish with that fantastic chassis, made even more acute by the Weissach Pack, thus moving the bar of violence on road and track as you would have never thought to experience on a car that as the most extreme option has an insurance certificate and therefore the possibility of being used in the real world. No jokes.

Being a proper driver would be better, but in any case the 700 horsepower and 750Nm of the 3.8 biturbo will still make you go into outer space every time you press the throttle without half measures. The new 911 GT2 RS redefines the concept of speed, but for doing this an engine like the one that has been inevitably stowed behind the rear axle wouldn’t be enough. What Porsche has created is a monstrous apocalyptic war machine capable of jagging the boundaries of the collective imagination as far as we know. Its body is reminiscent of a 911 to say the least anabolic, but being able to touch it is the only way to really understand that it is not a random Porsche.

It is the most powerful 911 that has ever laid its wheels on the road, the most violent, also flashy and threatening. Yet, after taking a minimum of confidence with its gut-wrenching nature, you will not feel in the middle of a Russian roulette. It will be thanks to that composite braking system or an aerodynamic improved one Karussell after the other, but when you tighten that steering wheel covered in Alcantara and from which the minimal secondary control has disappeared, you understand that it is one of those cars that have one purpose only, to drag you into a vortex of adrenaline that knows no compromises. Logically based on the 991.2 GT3 RS, it looks apparently similar, but it’s in fact diametrically different and not only for the fact that we are dealing with a turbocharged engine, a 3.8cc biturbo that delivers an inhuman power, so much to make necessary the use of a power limiter. Too extreme for the road and too noisy for the track, so where this GT2 RS can really vent that anger pent-up behind the rear axle?

The reality of the facts is always represented by an objective picture of the situation and here we clearly deal with one of the most extreme Porsche ever produced in Stuttgart’s illustrious history. But there is to say that thanks to a car body that does not care about compromises or about bringing you rested at destination, the GT2 RS is equally expendable, leaving those high-sounding numbers as a simple warning, without implying to stay away. Just look at it, it almost transmits some sort of fear accentuated as you approach and you really realize that every particular shout out loud violence. In your head you prefigure almost how it will move those incredibly wide tires (325/30/R21) crouched under a spoiler even more mammoth than usual. If it could, it would spit fire, but at the same time wants to welcome you with the sinuous and familiar lines of what resembles a 911. Opening the door you immediately realize the lightness of each panel, the GT2 RS has been stripped of every ounce in excess and the passenger compartment is invaded by carbon fiber and Alcantara. The bucket seats are as hard as the embrace of a skeleton, but they are also able to keep you motionless once thrown between a series of fast corners. On the central tunnel there are only the buttons for traction control and suspension settings, while the only gearbox available is an automatic/sequential, the only solution able to cope with such a reserve of power. The PDK is the well known 7-speed dual clutch and has two paddles behind the wheel, which in my opinion continue to be small compared to how I would have preferred them to be perfectly reachable under excited circumstances. In front of the driver – or it would be better to say the pilot – the classic five-dial instrumentation, where we find the tachometer in the center, right next to the speedo and the digital display through which various parameters of the car are controlled.

If you shelve the desire to deflagrate the world around for a moment, it will almost seem to be on board a traditional 911, because the comfort and fluidity on the move can offer a wide mirror of driving feedbacks. But this, as well as being uninteresting, does nothing but watering the thirst to give vent to the titanium exhaust system, a real tool through which to trigger your personal judgment day. A bit like a dragon that suddenly opens its eyes, the GT2 RS comes to life and makes havoc of what is around it, whether it is a mountain road or a racing track that allows its decibels to scream its 9.11 hymn to glory. 750Nm of torque sound enough to shake the Earth’s axis, let alone to leave a bit of rubber on the ground, but to describe the impressive ability to gain speed is not just about brutal acceleration. Of course with a torque curve that comes into play almost immediately – at just 2500 rpm – and pushes the 700 horsepower up to nearly 7000 revs, your skull box will be invaded by a deafening physical and sensorial noise and all that will call your attention will be the need not to do crash at the first corner. It is here that you realize that the braking system must have been designed on another planet, or even in another galaxy. Cornering is just as surgical, with a chassis that becomes so rigid as to look like a slab parallel to the asphalt, but eluding traction control gives way to the ultimate fun, or better yet the consecration of a car that is really too powerful to be pushed to the limit and then finds its maximum expression in that immediately preceding step made of a far more involving way of playing the game than reaching sterile speeds for which you would really need a launch pad.

The 6 cylinder does not even seem a 6 cylinder, its generosity in delivery is constant, always present and aptly tireless, thanks to the two turbos that work synergistically and guarantee an always ready response, remembering a supply that winks to those old single-turbos that decades ago were giving that good old kick in the back. It is not so much a matter of 0-100 kph in 2.8 seconds or the maximum speed limited to 340 per hour, as the fact that regardless of where you are, the left hand goes down by a pair of gears and the right foot sinks to the floor. Everything else takes the form of a take-off into space, accompanied by a kind of howling that follows you and increases as you become familiar with this diabolical war machine. The GT2 RS is not a car for heroes, it’s fierce and if the devil drove on our roads it would surely have one of these, in red and with black stripes like that of our friend Raul Marchisio, founder and owner at RM Autosport. He is a chap that takes two minutes to understand how to treat a supercar and then it will be a non-stop tires killing, brushing hairpins with a millimeter precision and with such ease to confirm once again that Porsche – we do not know how – has succeeded to create a mad weapon that will never cease to amaze.

At this point you may have noticed that we did not wasted one second describing the shape of the bumpers, the logical lack of rear seats or purely aesthetic details of this 911 on steroids. The answer is just the one you can imagine when you are face to face with something that has been created to convey strong emotions. Here’s how to feel alive, how to increase your heart rate by just sitting on board. And then turn the key, strictly to the left. In that precise moment, all the details, all the questions and images that invaded your brain until a few moments before vanish in the blink of an eye. It’s like being born again and in the same way you seem to do everything for the first time, a new path where everyday’s roads appear different and every little pebble bounces under you and echoes in a cabin that has not only been stripped off physically but emotionally. Almost wrapped around the steering wheel you can see how your body vibrates thanks to suspensions that will soon be all that stands between you and an epochal disaster, just like the carbon-ceramic brakes, incredibly powerful and tireless, the only way to stop the crazy race of these 700 horses. The GT2 RS is one of those cars you would ask to drive if today was the last day of planet Earth, because it is so damn wild yet able to embellish the relationship of intimacy you can create. It is a car that crystallizes the emotions and keeps them forever, so strong and deep that you could not forget them even trying to do that. An instant classic out of time, an instrument able to create epic moments on wheels from the destruction of any belief linked to speed or cornering, simply thanks to the endless smiles experienced clinging to a steering wheel a few meters sideways.

A special thank goes to RM Autosport Monaco for having made this day possible.