Ultimate Porsche Race: Taycan Turbo vs GT3 RS vs GT3 Cup
There is no way the all-electric luxury sedan Taycan Turbo can keep up with the best from the Porsche motorsport division. Or can it?
A lot has already been written about the Porsche Taycan Turbo and for good reason. The car not only looks great but performs the way you would expect a Porsche to perform. That being said, it is a luxury four-door sedan that tips the scales at over two and a half tons. On the other hand, Porsche does still make some laser focused track and racing cars. The GT3 RS is the street version of the full-on GT3 Cup racing car. Those vehicles are designed for one thing and that is setting the fastest lap time possible. The Taycan Turbo is extremely quick off the line, but can it really hope to compete against an actual racecar? The Cup car does not have the power of the Taycan but it weighs half as much, and rides on full slick racing tires. Come on, this is not going to be close.
Porsche themselves were interested in seeing how well the Taycan could hold up against its motorsport specials. So, they recently took the Taycan Turbo, 991.2 GT3 RS and 991.2 GT3 Cup to Sandown International Raceway in Australia. Everything is upside down in Australia so maybe in that world the Taycan would stand a chance. Sadly, they did not give the driving duties to any automotive writers. Porsche Track Experience instructors, Luke Youlden, Tony D’Alberto and Chris Pither were to pilot the cars. Porsche shared the results with the world on their YouTube channel.
The first test was a single lap of the track from a standing start. If you are not familiar with Sandown, it is a big power track. It has long front and back straights that will give the advantage to the more powerful cars. This is not a tight technical track. Pither was behind the wheel of the GT3 RS. He felt his advantage over the Cup car was his tires. The full racing slicks on the GT3 Cup would take time to come up to temperature. Youlden was in the Taycan and acknowledged that the biggest advantage would be the jump off the line. That leaves D’Alberto in the Cup car. He felt the high-speed stability and braking power would give him the edge.
The cars line up and it is time to see who is right, and who is last. To keep things somewhat even there is a staggered start. The Taycan Turbo starts 3.4 seconds before the Cup car. The GT3 RS gets a 2.0 second head start and then finally the GT3 Cup is released. It would have been fun to have them all start at the same time to truly see the performance gap between them. However, it is understandable as they are pitting a family car against a racer after all.
As expected, the Taycan rockets off the line and easily makes it to the first corner first. By about the halfway point on the track the cars are running much closer together. The GT3 RS is about 2 car lengths behind the Taycan and the Cup car about 2 lengths behind the RS. Coming out of the final turn the cars are basically three abreast. Just the long straight to the finish remains. The acceleration and all-wheel drive grip of the Taycan is just too much for the other cars to overcome. The Taycan crosses the line about 3 feet ahead of the RS and about a car length ahead of the Cup car.
Now it is time for a straight up drag race. This is where the electric Taycan is going to hold the biggest advantage. This time they do allow all the cars to launch at the same time. The Taycan simply walks the other two cars. The Cup car comes second but it is not even close. It is tough to beat the all-wheel drive grip and instant torque that the Taycan brings to the party.
Impressive showing for the Taycan. Sure, the results would be different if this was a 50-lap race. However, you can’t deny the performance of the luxury sedan. Now if Porsche said you could take one home which set of keys would you grab? Let us know in the 6SpeedOnline forums.
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