Quote:
adrift said:
The 996 GT3 has been described as tricky and quick to bite if not driven correctly / carefully. Can someone please provide some more descriptive insight into what people mean when they say this? Under what conditions does the car misbehave? What are the ramifications? How to best correct or catch it?
I would like a little more info on what people mean when they talk about the handling idiosynchracies of the 996 variant; test driving a car rarely provides an opportunity to try it at the limit, so seeing for myself isn't really a possibility.
Thanks
To me the 'ring laptimes b/t the two cars is a collateral issue and does not answer the original question. I'll try to take a stab at it.
I had the 996 GT3 and tracked it, as well as several 996 cars before that and a 997S after that. To me, the change from the 996 to the 997 chassis is huge. Steering accuracy, stability, overall precision were all vastly improved in the 997. My main issue with the 996 GT3 is the screwed up suspension geometry caused by excessively low ride height. This translates into nervous, gittery handling on the road, non-linear steering, tramlining and the like. On the track, however, I found a lot of this went away; when the car is loaded, all is pretty well with the way the car behaves.
I didn't at all find the GT3 to be evil handling, ready to bite you. Rather, I found it 'busy'; lots of steering corrections, lots of movement from the rear. The suspension geometry issues have been verified by race shops who have set up these cars for track/competition. Indeed, Porsche recognized the issues and fixed them in the 996 GT3 RS, which has revised suspension pickup points. Even EVO magazine in one of its tests noted the suspensin issues and called it a fantastic but flawed car, which was 'fixed' by the RS. The improvements in the RS are said to have tranlated over into the 997 cars, which have revised wheel carriers and suespion geometry to eliminate the non linearity of the 996.
I toyed with another 996 GT3, but if I went that route, I'd go for the RS suspension from Gert, minus the dampers (I'd use Moton club sports).
I haven't driven the 997 GT3, but based on the 997S I owned, it will be a more stable, less jittery, more confident handling car with improved path accuracy. It also will be more benign in its shift b/t understeer and oversteer; more tractable and easier to 'catch' in the hands of a non profesional driver, weekend warriors like myslf.
In sum, the 996 GT3 aren't 'evil' by any stretch. They communicate so well to the driver, it's fairly easy to manage the car. But it is a 'busy' car to drive on and off the track.