The factory Porsche Team Manthey World Endurance Championship squad sat out this year waiting on a new racing 911, and we finally know what that new car for 2017 will look like. Today, Porsche unveiled their new GTE-spec endurance racing 911, in all its naked, angry glory.
Porsche unveiled their successor to the current 911 RSR in a tweet early this morning, complete with photos of it on their test track in Weissach. Man, this car looks mean.
The current 911 RSR still uses the Metzger flat-six engine from the previous 997-generation 911. While Porsche hasn’t released technical details about this new GTE-spec racer, everyone’s curious as to whether it will be powered by a tweaked version of the flat-six engine used in their latest 991-generation road cars.
The Porsche Team Manthey WEC squad won’t be the first team to race it, though. Because the WeatherTech Sports Car Championship starts a bit earlier in the year and also uses GTE-spec machinery for its GTLM class, the Porsche North America team will debut the car at the 24 Hours of Daytona in January.
While debuting the car at a full 24-hour race is no small task, Head of Porsche Motorsport Dr. Frank-Steffen Walliser said in today’s press release that the new car’s development is “right on schedule.”
For now, Porsche will continue testing their new 911 racer at tracks all around the world. Porsche already brought in most of their works drivers to test the car during the car’s development at Weissach, but their work is far from over before the car is ready for the 2017 season.