Driving the 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup and GT3 R: Two Race Cars Are More Fun Than One

Porsche builds a wide range of race cars, from the 718 Cayman GT4 RS Clubsport to the 963 endurance racer to the 99X Formula E car. However, only two are based on the super awesome 911 GT3 street car: the 911 GT3 Cup and the 911 GT3 R. If you wanted to make a sweeping, not especially true generalization just to get the point across, you could say the Cup car is like the "regular" GT3 and that the GT3 R is akin to the big-aero GT3 RS.

Look quickly, and you'll see the Cup car has a normal hood just like your garden variety 911 GT3, whereas the 911 GT3 R has its frunk fully occupied by a big vent/air extractor that feeds a nearly horizontal radiator. Put more accurately, however, the GT3 Cup is related more to both the GT3 and GT3 RS than not, whereas the GT3 R is a much more distant relative.

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More Cup Details

Let's begin with the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. Each example begins life on the standard production GT3 assembly line in Flacht, Germany, just next to, but not in, Weissach. Once partially assembled, Cup cars are sent to a third-party partner that welds in the rollcage and attaches the air-jack system (and a few other modifications) before the cars are routed back to Flacht. This part of the process limits Cup production to about five units per week. The engine is about 95 percent identical to what you'd rev in the street GT3, though of course you can't see much of a GT3's wicked 4.0-liter naturally aspirated humdinger of a boxer-six that revs to 9,000 rpm and howls like the proverbial banshee. The Cup car has a quick-release panel so mechanics can access part of the engine from above. Back to the howling boxer, the GT3 Cup car wails even louder than stock. Louder, even, than the GT3 R, at least in the configuration I experienced.

The 911 Cup car has mostly the same engine as the GT3 street car, minus almost all the sound-sapping emissions stuff, though it retains motorsport-spec catalytic converters. There are three exhausts available, as well as three mufflers because different countries have different rules.

"Scandinavian tracks are very particular when it comes to maximum noise levels," Jan Feldmann, project manager for the GT3 Cup car, says. In place of either the stock seven-speed twin-clutch PDK or six-speed manual transmission, the Cup cars get a six-speed sequential autobox from Ricardo that weighs about half as much as what shifts the gears in the road cars. Notably, the Cup car retains the clutch pedal from the GT3 manual, but you only need to use it in first gear to get moving. The GT3 R ditches the third pedal in favor of mini paddles above the regular shift paddles that simply closes the clutch in first gear.

Things that stay the same on/in the GT3 Cup compared to the street GT3 are the suspension pieces, including the much ballyhooed "double wishbones" up front (we here atMotorTrendcall them upper and lower A-arms, otherwiseMTtechnical director Frank Markus' head explodes), as well as the traction and stability control software. Most of the aluminum bodywork remains. However, to accommodate the wider-than-stock front tires, some tough-looking fender flares are grafted on. Side-window glass is gone. Beyond that the seat rails and the headlights/taillights are common between the GT3 street and Cup cars, and that's most of it. Windshield and wiper? Sure, probably. Feldmann says more than 99 percent of 911 Cups are sold to teams competing in the 34 Porsche Carrera Cup series and races that take place around the world. Used Cup cars can wind up anywhere, though—hopefully on a track near you.

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R You Worthy?

The Porsche 911 GT3 R is a much more radical race car than the Cup version, as it has to deal with all the rules and regulations handed down by the body that controls GT3-class racing around the world, the SRO Motorsports Group. The 911 GT3 Rs are the ones you see racing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and other big-time GT series globally.

The R's engine is bored out to 4.2 liters, which along with different pistons, software (more on the 1s and 0s in a moment), and a higher redline helps to boost power from around 500 horses to 557 when running fully unrestricted. More fascinating is that all the belt-driven accessories (alternator, A/C compressor, water pump) are removed from the engine block itself (still located using the stock GT3's engine mounts) and relocated in front of the transmission, then run off said transmission, thereby relocating precious pounds forward to the center of the car. While rear-engine cars have certain advantages—traction under power and stability under braking being the two biggies—Porsche's GT engineers want to improve the overall balance as much as possible, with rear tire wear being their biggest motivator. Less weight on the rear meats means less frequent tire swaps, something none of the GT3 Rs front- and mid-engine competitors has to worry about.

The production 911 GT3's wiring harness never makes it into the GT3 R; all the electronics are pure motorsport spec, including latitudinal and longitudinal traction control. Why not go with stock software, like the Cup car does? Occam's Razor. Having no need for lines of code to manage things like airbags, navigation, window switches, fuel door, radar cruise control, hood sensor, etc., means diagnosing errors is in theory easier.

Back to the two types of traction control: Latitudinal means grip into corners, whereas longitudinal refers to traction out of corners. The driver can adjust both via control knobs on the steering wheel. The KW dampers are manually adjustable three-way units with settings for both low- and high-speed compression, as well as rebound. Each anti-roll bar (there are four, one per wheel) is hand-adjustable (just grab and turn) and mounted to custom GT3 R-specific suspension pieces. As mentioned, there's no clutch pedal on the GT3 R, but there are tiny little paddles above the bigger, regular shift paddles that you use to close the clutch in first gear from a dead stop.

Other GT3 R changes include even wider wheels than those used on the Cup car, carbon-fiber body panels in place of the GT3 Cup's aluminum ones, GT3-series-specific headlights, a fixed seat with movable pedals, a much more aggressive and effective aero package, and in place of a passenger seat, a box where up to 75 kilograms (about 165 pounds) of Balance of Performance ballast plates can go. Despite all the differences, the two Porsches weigh almost the same, with the Cup car listed at 2,772 pounds (though for the 2023 Porsche Carrera Cup North America season, the weight was set to 2,908 via ballast) and the carbon-fiber-intensive GT3 R a scant 22 pounds lighter, right at 2,750 pounds. Contrast those numbers with 992.1-generation GT3s we've weighed: one manual at 3,188 pounds, one PDK at 3,211, and one manual Touring model at 3,251. Price is a big final difference between the two race cars: The Cup car will set you back $287,500, whereas the GT3 R is literally double that at $575,000. Destination fees depend upon so many specific factors that I'm opting to leave the number out. Just know there is one.

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How We Got Here

Porsche flew yours truly and comedian, actor, beatboxer, musician, and recently revealed car guy Reggie Watts to Portugal's old, decommissioned (yet still fantastic) F1 track, Estoril, to enjoy some laps. Because I have some racing experience in a Porsche (the 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport at Pikes Peak), I was tasked with driving both cars. Reggie was getting laps only in the Cup car, and I'd also get a few sighting laps. Our driver is the 2023 Porsche Junior Champion, Bastian Buus, a young Dane who stands about 6-foot-4 and weighs maybe 140 pounds. I mention his size only because I jealously watched him eat two full plates of pasta at lunch. After Reggie got tossed around like a proverbial ragdoll, I noticed he couldn't stop smiling. Now it was my turn.

Not to cast aspersions, especially because I loved every second of it, but I believe Buus was going for fun taxi laps rather than quick ones. That meant drifting around almost every corner and putting the Cup's carbon-carbon brakes and Michelin slicks on full display. Imagine being 20 years old, quite skilled at driving, and it's your job to make sure people have a great time in a passenger seat. It was like that.

Also of note, this gold car is the 5,000th Porsche Cup car built—the first was a 964 Carrera 2 Cup car back in 1990—and will live out its life in the Porsche Museum. Buus didn't let this fact stop him. I've driven Estoril a few times before, so after semi-relearning enough to do a lap on my own, I decided to note which gear he was in for each corner. Through a super tight chicane, he dropped all the way down to first, and on the big front straight he got as high as fifth. I thumbed up and thanked him for the laps, then got into the driver's seat as the tech boys used the air jacks to lift the car so as to fit new tires coming out of the warmers.

Earlier, Feldmann had run me through all the steering wheel's buttons, plus the physical buttons on the center stack and the red aluminum brake-bias knob mounted on the right side of the dash. That said, counting my out lap, I'm only getting five laps, so the plan is not to adjust much of anything. Traction control and ABS intervention are tuned to the middle setting, and that's fine by me. I ask Buus how he runs the car in competition, and he says with the TC on about 3, depending upon the track.

Really, the only button I need to worry about is the one labelled PIT, which sets the pit speed to 31 mph (50 kph). The trick to getting the GT3 Cup rolling is to engage first gear (via the right paddle) and slowly let the clutch out with your left foot and then floor the throttle. That will quickly get you up to 31 mph. It's counterintuitive with a pitlane full of people standing around, sure, but if you fail to fully open it up, the engine starts bogging and you might even stall it. Once you clear the end of pitlane, you simply press the PIT button again, and the GT3 Cup bursts to life.

My strongest memory of the 992 GT3 street car didn't take place on a track or a winding road; I was giving a buddy of mine a joy ride on a big empty street. But the feeling of slamming through the gears and how potent the whole car is was just wild. And impressive. It left a mark. The 911 GT3 Cup is even more muscular. Similar levels of torque, but this time transmitted to the pavement via slick racing tires in a lighter vehicle and ... yeah, baby. The traction under power is phenomenal, and like any true race car, so is the braking power. A surprise awaits me around Turn 3, a nearly 180-degree right hander—this thing slides around! I thought Buus was drifting the corners just because he could, but it turns out that, no, the Cup car's rear end gets loose around tight stuff. A dab of oppo was required, as my British friends (probably) say, before getting back on the power. Time to pay closer attention.

My time in the Cup car was as much a quickly relearn-the-track session as it was a time to get to know the machine. Before I knew what anything other than the fan button did, I was back in the pits. I knew I'd hit 161 mph on the front straight, braked way too early every single time for five straight laps, and that Turns 9 and 10 (together called Gancho) constitute a bumpy, violent, headbanging first-gear nightmare. I got it wrong each and every time and would continue to do so for the remainder of the day. No time to stop and reflect, however, because it's time to jump into the GT3 R.

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Another Level

Because the car was going to be driven by us journalist types, the engine had been baffled down to the same power output as the Cup car, right around 500 hp. In a straight line, the two felt almost identical in terms of accelerative punch, though the Cup car was louder. Turning the GT3 R's wheel, however, revealed a completely different beast. Boy, is this a great-handling thing, race car or not. The differing geometry of the wheels and suspension is no doubt part of it, but at the moment all my brain can think is, "This car feels more tied down through corners than the last one." Most important—and perhaps it's just me—but because the GT3 R doesn't have a vestigial clutch pedal, you can easily left-foot brake. I notice almost instantly how happy the car is under trail-braking, a technique I'm much better at performing with my left foot. I can brake later and more effectively, then get back on the power sooner in the GT3 R than I could in the Cup car.

Part of this is no doubt due to the GT3 R's superior aero package. Porsche won't say exactly how much downforce either car makes, but in the case of the GT3 R, allow me to answer: enough. The best corners at Estoril—says me—are the high-speed, unnamed Turn 5 and the increasing-radius Turn 13—also known as Parabolica Ayrton Senna—that takes you onto the main straight. Turn 5 is more a kink than a corner, and with a few laps under my belt, I'm able to take it flat (or at least my version of flat) in fourth gear. The glorious, counterintuitive thing about downforce is, the faster you go, the more glued down the car feels. The top of fourth gear is probably around 130 mph (I forgot to look!), and that's just an awesome speed to take through any corner.

The other thing to know about big-downforce cars is that when you're going slow, there is no aero effect. There will be moments when you're decelerating and suddenly it feels like you've hit ice. That's just the aerodynamics passing g-forces to the tires. The "Whoops!" moment shows up quite suddenly, but you do get used to it. Then, as you begin to accelerate, the downforce comes back, whether you're aware of it or not. That leads us to Turn 13, Parabolica Ayrton Senna, a long righthand sweeper you begin in second gear in the GT3 R that's over by the time you click into fourth. With each lap I trusted the car's aero more and more, and I could see the results by looking at my Vmax at the next braking zone at the end of the front straight. Each lap it climbed, 258 kph, 259, 260, and on my last lap I saw 261 kph—162 mph—before the seemingly indefatigable brakes whoaed me down from fifth to second for Turn 1. The Porsche 911 GT3 R doesn't produce more power as the lap count clicks up; I was just getting onto the straightaway quicker and quicker because I learned to lean on the car's aero bits.

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Over Too Soon

There you have it. A fantastic yet all too brief run in two of Porsche's factory race cars. Surprisingly, I found the more potent 911 GT3 R easier to drive than the 911 GT3 Cup. Not that the Cup was difficult to drive, but for me it was more challenging. The relative absence of downforce (there was some, sure, but not like I found in the R) meant the Cup car was more of a handful in quicker corners. Fun, absolutely, but more work. That said, I totally get how Porsche's built and sold more than 5,000 race cars like this during the past 33 years.

In the 911 GT3 R I found myself thinking, "I could do this all day," even though I'm positive I'd tire out long before the car did. What a beautiful brute, and I'd love another go, especially with the additional 57 muted horsepower added back in. That's the real point. On the way home, I asked Watts how he enjoyed our trip. "Such a dream," he said. "This really had an effect on me." We flew 12 hours each way for about a dozen or so laps. Given the opportunity, we'd do it again tomorrow. These race cars, and the experience of driving them, are that good.