New Porsche 911 GT3 R ‘Developed from Home Office’

Photo: Porsche

The early stages of development of Porsche’s new GT3 contender was done via remote work according to project manager Sebastian Golz.

The German manufacturer, which will roll out with an all-new Porsche 911 GT3 R in 2023, began work on the new 992-based race car during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced its engineering team to take an out-of-the-box approach.

While remote work has become commonplace across the industry since early 2020, it was never done before on the early phases of development of a Porsche race car.

“The cool thing I have to say is something I said to my whole project group,” Golz told Sportscar365.

“This time with COVID you can create ‘babies’ at home.

“It’s been possible to develop cars from the home office and having exchanges by video conference calls. It’s incredible how it works.”

The remote work by Porsche engineers on the newest-generation GT3 car is understood to have progressed beyond the virtual world in recent months, although Golz declined to go into detail on the car’s current state of development.

“Everything is on schedule and all good,” he said. “At the moment we’re on it.”

Golz said that improved serviceability and reduced running costs are among the areas of focus of the new car.

“We always try to make it much easier to work on the car and not have an increase in cost on the running side,” he explained.

“[The customers] have to work and earn their money with these cars as that’s the business.

“If you’re just building a factory car like the RSR, this is a pure race car and every single piece costs a lot of money.

“We can find some compromises with the FIA GT3 category to push the costs down, to make it possible for [teams] to make a business case around it.

“This is one of the main targets we have to do, to follow and to achieve a good level for them. If we have no customers that are able to run the cars, to finance the programs, we wouldn’t sell any cars.

Golz added: “From Porsche’s side, FIA GT3 is customer racing. We put factory effort in but it’s customer racing.

“It makes no sense if you’re building cars with the only reason to go for factory racing. No customer would be able to race these cars.

“The main focus for Porsche in building this category is to make the best car for customers that can rely on it. These cars are pure race cars and it’s already there to race on a high level.”

Porsche is understood to have stopped new car builds of the current-generation 911 GT3 R in anticipation for the rollout of the new car, which will likely begin in late 2022.

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John