2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT With Weissach Package Beats Tesla Model S Plaid’s Laguna Seca Lap Record
Porsche’s latest, hottest Taycan is only tenths slower than the McLaren Senna hypercar.
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On February 23, 2024, at 10:50 a.m. with Lars Kern behind the wheel, a new, hardcore variant of Porsche's all-electric sedan set the series-production electric-car lap record at California's Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca by more than 2 seconds.
"He went faster!" I shouted. None of the approximately four-dozen human beings—an equal mix of influencer/content-creator types and Porsche employees—standing behind me heard a word. They were all too consumed with a massive set of screens the company set up to show a live feed of Kern rocketing around the track in the brand-new 2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach package. A moment later the gathered crowd erupted in cheers. This was Kern's second go, and he'd already set the record 30 minutes earlier, handily beating the existing 1-minute, 30.3-second record held by Sebastian Vittel (no relation to Sebastian Vettel) in a Tesla Model S Plaid.
Kern had popped off a 1:28.26 in a Grimace purple Taycan Turbo GT Weissach, but the tires just weren't having it when he attempted a second lap. So he simply hopped into the car he'd set the Nürburgring Nordschleife production electric-car record in and wrote himself into the Laguna Seca record book yet again. Within minutes, almost all of the Porsche employees changed into purple T-shirts that read, "Look How We Unscrewed the Corkscrew." Let's assume it sounds better in German.
The What
This new Taycan variant will sit atop the Turbo S in the Taycan range when it arrives at U.S. dealerships this summer. The Taycan Turbo GT comes in two flavors, regular and the significantly modified track monster dubbed the Weissach package. Beginning with the Taycan Turbo GT, horsepower is way up compared to the S, with overboost raising it from 938 to 1,093. Regular power output rises from 764 to 1,019 hp. Torque also increases, from 818 to 988 lb-ft.
The Turbo GT still uses the original Taycan's layout, with just two motors versus the three-motor setups found in the Tesla Model X Plaid and Lucid Air Sapphire. The Taycan Turbo GTs also retain the two-speed transmission connected only to the rear motor. Visually, though, you can easily tell the Weissach package from the "normal" Turbo GT by the big wing stuck on the former's rump. It increases downforce by 303 pounds in the rear, according to the manufacturer. Meanwhile, aeroblades and a front splitter produce another 176 pounds of downward pressure on the nose.
A Big Boy
I spoke to Kern immediately after he climbed out of the purple car. On his first record-setting lap of 1:28.26, he said he made some small errors that cost him some tenths. He then tried to correct himself on lap two, but the tires were shot. Remember, even with as much weight reduction as Porsche could manage—the 5,038 pounds for the Turbo GT drops to 4,884 pounds for the Weissach package, though it gained 44 pounds with race seats and a rollcage added for safety, so 4,928 sans driver—the Turbo GT is still a heavy machine for a racetrack.
Porsche felt the best strategy was to run a hot lap, a cool down lap, and then a second hot lap. However, that effectively put the tires through a complete heat cycle and ruined their ultimate pace. Some of you might think, hey, Laguna Seca is 2.2 miles long, and the Nürburgring is nearly 13 miles in length, why not just perform two hot laps in a row? Because the new Taycan Turbo GT would have gone even quicker on the 'Ring had its Pirelli P Zero R tires held up better.
Happy it had smashed Tesla's time but still wanting more, Porsche put Kern into the black and blue car for one more attempt. An employee let slip that the Model S Plaid was never the real target.
No, the number the Taycan team was after was one that we, MotorTrend , set previously. Back during our Best Driver's Car days, pro racer Randy Pobst put down a scorching 1:28.3 in a 2018 Porsche GT2 RS. But the Taycan team had "mathed" it out and believed the Turbo GT Weissach could put a hurt on that time, and maybe even approach the McLaren Senna hypercar's lap of 1:27.62.
More important, Kern liked the way the black and blue car drove better than the purple version, even though the day before he'd been quicker while practicing in the latter. Porsche also brought living racing legend Timo Bernhard along (watch his 919 Hybrid Evo record lap around the Nürburgring!) to advise, and he said Kern was too calm during practice—his heartrate hadn't crested 100 beats per minute. Yes, Porsche had him hooked up to a heart rate monitor, and on the real run we saw Kern's heart pumping at 165 bpm. So Bernhard felt confident that the driver was giving it his all.
I've spent countless hours timing laps while standing against the K-Wall just after Laguna's Turn 11, the corner that leads back onto the track's kinked main straight. So even though Porsche had gone whole hog with the livestream video setup, I opted to hand-time the runs instead of watching the live feed. That's how I was aware Kern and the 2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach reset the lap record about an eighth of a mile before everyone else. The official time: 1:27.87.
That's a mere 0.2 second difference between a 5,000-pound electric sedan and one of the quickest production car (of any ilk) laps ever recorded at Laguna Seca, by a McLaren Senna—a veritable carbon-fiber track toy that weighs about a full ton less. To use the most clichéd phrase of our time, I'm shocked. Good work, Porsche. Lucid, whatcha got?
When I was just one-year-old and newly walking, I managed to paint a white racing stripe down the side of my father’s Datsun 280Z. It’s been downhill ever since then. Moral of the story? Painting the garage leads to petrolheads. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always had strong opinions about cars.
One day I realized that I should combine two of my biggest passions and see what happened. Turns out that some people liked what I had to say and within a few years Angus MacKenzie came calling. I regularly come to the realization that I have the best job in the entire world. My father is the one most responsible for my car obsession. While driving, he would never fail to regale me with tales of my grandfather’s 1950 Cadillac 60 Special and 1953 Buick Roadmaster. He’d also try to impart driving wisdom, explaining how the younger you learn to drive, the safer driver you’ll be. “I learned to drive when I was 12 and I’ve never been in an accident.” He also, at least once per month warned, “No matter how good you drive, someday, somewhere, a drunk’s going to come out of nowhere and plow into you.”
When I was very young my dad would strap my car seat into the front of his Datsun 280Z and we’d go flying around the hills above Malibu, near where I grew up. The same roads, in fact, that we now use for the majority of our comparison tests. I believe these weekend runs are part of the reason why I’ve never developed motion sickness, a trait that comes in handy when my “job” requires me to sit in the passenger seats for repeated hot laps of the Nurburgring. Outside of cars and writing, my great passions include beer — brewing and judging as well as tasting — and tournament poker. I also like collecting cactus, because they’re tough to kill. My amazing wife Amy is an actress here in Los Angeles and we have a wonderful son, Richard.Read More
