Max Verstappen didn’t win the Nürburgring 24 Hours. But he did something that the combined might of Mercedes, Ferrari, BMW, Aston Martin, Lamborghini and, yes, even Porsche, has failed to achieve. He made us tune in to GT racing.

GT racing has had great grids for a decade or so now. The cars are recognisable, they look great in full flight and the racing is close. Yet it has still never fully cut through to achieve wider recognition. Turns out what it needed was Formula 1’s most singular talent taking on endurance racing’s most singular challenge.

It benefited all. Verstappen, whether in the air or on the grass, proved he’s a total racing nut and we loved him for having a go. The event sold out for the first time ever as 230,000 fans descended on this corner of the Eifel region, and everyone, from headline sponsors to local biergartens, profited.

But among all this hype and hyperbole, there was a nagging problem. The issue is this: most manufacturers present don’t seem to believe that racing improves the breed. Lamborghini has been involved in GT3 racing for a decade; Aston Martin and Ferrari for double that; BMW and Mercedes have both been there for 15 years. They’re all racing modified but instantly recognisable road cars. And yet none of them has allowed their race car to influence road car development.

All apart from one. On the grid, the biggest rival for Verstappen’s No3 Winward Mercedes shared with Jules Gounon, Dani Juncadella and Lucas Auer was the No911 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R. Painted in traditional lurid ‘Grello’ fluoro, the Manthey-run Porsches are a fixture at the N24. In fact no team has won the Nürburgring 24 Hours more – seven times. And Porsche is the only marque that uses its Manthey-run race cars to influence its road car development.

Which brings us to the machine we have here, the revised 992.2 911 GT3 with Manthey Kit. This is a £56,000 option. For that you get a badge on the console, illuminated carbon door sills and LED puddle lights. Not even joking. But then there’s the stuff that actually makes it go faster, which focuses on two areas: suspension and aerodynamics. And boy does Manthey know what it’s doing there.

“This car puts its arms around your shoulder and leads you on”

But first a bit of history. Manthey Racing was founded in 1996. Having started with 911s in the Porsche Supercup – and taking victory in both the drivers’ and teams’ championships every year from 1997 to 2000 – it went on to win FIA WEC championships and six Le Mans class victories. In 2013 Porsche took a controlling stake – effectively making Manthey its in-house race team.

Porsche has long prided itself on how fast its road cars, as well as its race cars, go around the Nürburgring. However, the GT2 RS had lost its crown to the AMG GT Black Series in 2020. So the one place it could turn was to the company that knew more about making 911s faster around a track than anyone else on the planet.

Porsche went back to the Nürburgring with a GT2 RS modified by Manthey and knocked 4sec off its own lap time, reclaiming the production car lap record. But what went into achieving that might help explain why Porsche allows racing to influence road cars, and why Manthey is held in such high regard. Because this was not some free-for-all project where the sky was the limit. In order to still qualify as a road car and not force Porsche to go through a lengthy and costly re-homologation, the car had to fit the exact same template as the existing GT2 RS. It couldn’t be lighter, it couldn’t be more powerful, it couldn’t use more fuel and it couldn’t have more aero drag. And any new components also had to survive the exact same durability and quality tests as the ones they were replacing, allowing them to be warrantied for up to 15 years.

So successful was the project that Porsche, even if it doesn’t admit it, now has two separate Nürburgring lap times. One set by the factory car, another by the same car modified by Manthey. Its Cayman GT4 RS, 911 GT3 RS and most recently the electric Taycan Turbo GT have all had their lap times improved (in the case of the latter, by more than 12sec) and crowns regained.

This revised 992.2 911 GT3 is the latest to get the Manthey treatment. So how does it differ from the ’standard’ version?

The first surprise is that while the front springs are 20% stiffer, the rears are 7% softer. The adaptive dampers are replaced with a set of four-way adjustable passive shocks built by KW to Manthey’s specifications. But it’s the aero that contains the trickery. Because while you’re thinking it’s all about downforce, the first thing to note is that it’s actually 7% cleaner through the air. Then yes, it also develops significantly more downforce. This chiefly comes from air passing under, not over, the car.

A deeper splitter protrudes 12mm further and curls slightly upwards, pulling air down and into the underfloor which has been entirely redesigned to twist, turn and use the air as effectively as possible. Some of the vanes are up to 150cm long, providing corridors for the air to pass along before it’s diffused back into the atmosphere, having contributed to a total downforce figure of 540kg at 177mph. But all the eye sees is the disc rear wheel covers and the bigger rear wing end plates, the former helping to clean airflow down the flanks, the latter turning the air inwards to glue it to the car over the engine cover’s ducktail.

Obviously you’re paying for the intricacies of development and engineering here – and you haven’t stopped paying yet, as Manthey offers further options. You can have sets of their bespoke brake pads (£1275 for the fronts, £1175 for the rears) for the carbon ceramic discs, and for £9160 this car features Manthey’s lightweight aluminium wheels, which save 6kg over Porsche’s equivalents. A further £12,000 buys you a purely cosmetic carbon pack that replaces the regular bonnet vents and engine cover.

“A race team making a road car smoother and faster. This could catch on”

Don’t bother doing an equation between cost and lap time improvement because it doesn’t make for pretty reading. Instead we can marvel in the knowledge that the Nürburgring lap time improved from the standard car’s 6min 56.29sec to 6min 52.98sec. But that wasn’t enough for Manthey, so in mid-April with better weather conditions, it went back and driver Ayhancan Güven lopped another 2sec off that.

Impressive. However, this is a road car – it can’t be just about track speed. But let’s start there – or more specifically at Thruxton, home to a wide selection of ballsy high-speed corners. The downforce isn’t what I notice. That’s always hard to spot until it goes away. It’s usually the moment the trouble begins.

Instead it’s a sense of calmness under pressure, of a car that’s clearly working hard but exudes competence and control. It’s not sharp or snatchy as it deals with the mid-corner surface changes through Noble and Goodwood. Speeds are way up over 100mph, yet although there is a bit of lateral shimmy, the movements are composed, almost languid, the steering writhing gently despite the loads. The impression is of a car travelling fast, but unhurriedly. It’s not busy or hectic, so as a driver you find yourself following its lead. It’s not edgy about what’s going on, so neither are you. This is a car that puts its arm round your shoulders and leads you on.