Manthey Racing is a group of very straight laced Germans with a penchant for making Porsches go even faster. They’ve taken the 690 horsepower turbocharged Porsche maniac GT2 RS and made the aero, brakes, and suspension even more track biased. Chris Harris took it for a run at Portimao and ran a faster lap than he ever had before without so much as breaking a sweat. It makes sense, though, because this is the car that currently holds the Nurburgring lap record.
The company itself has been racing at the Nurburgring for decades, but has recently become something of an even faster and more focused performance arm of Porsche than the GT division. This is almost the skunkwerks within Porsche’s skunkwerks, because they are allowed to take things a level beyond, as they don’t sell these through Porsche dealerships. With things like GT3 Cup springs and dampers, plus gobs more downforce, and everything turned up to the next level, it’s a truly impressive car.
Top Gear host Chris Harris is a competent driver, having raced pretty much everything pretty much everywhere. He knows Portimao quite well, having done the P1/LaFerrari/918 Spyder comparison there, among other things. So for him to immediately hop in the GT2 RS MR and run a lap faster than any of those three, it must be some pretty impressive hardware. The KW race-spec dampers and Michelin near-race but still street legal rubber have advanced in leaps and bounds since the hybrid holy trinity were unleashed.
Once Chris Harris had had his fun, Certified Serious German and factory Porsche test driver Lars Kern stepped onboard and stomped all over Harris’ newly set record. On his warm up lap. The GT2 RS MR is the new lap record holder at Portimao (for street legal cars) without so much as a little effort. That says a lot about the car’s capabilities. And it’s just based on a standard off-the-production-line 911 chassis.