Automotive

Porsche 911 GT3 Burns On Real ‘Hot Lap’ Around the Nürburgring

An unhappy fact about my life is that, more than likely, I’ll never own a Porsche 911 GT3. The silver lining, however, is that I’ll never have to helplessly watch my 911 burn down on the Nürburgring.

The video description calling this a “hot lap” seems to me to be giving the knife an unneeded twist. It opens with a close up of the owner’s face. It’s blurry to protect his identity, but you can still make out the anguish.

At one point, first responders use the jaws of life to pry the hood open. By then, the flames are engulfing the car and you know it’s all over. But this video goes on and on for an aching 20 minutes. Why hold on the shattered parts of the 911 GT3 covered in flame-retardant foam? Why capture the hauling-away of its once supple frame? It must be some of that German-style schadenfreude.

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No one knows the cause of this fire, but this isn’t a new problem for 991 generation of 911 GT3s—though it is one we haven’t seen in a while. The problem was first identified in 2014, when Porsche put a stop-sale on the cars and told owners to stop driving them due to fire risks. Eventually Porsche identified the cause as faulty connecting rod fasteners and ended up replacing the engines of 785 911 GT3s.

We’re not sure of the year of this GT3, so we can’t say if it had the same issue, or if it was an older 991.1 that had its engine replaced.

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Luckily, no one was injured and there was no crash. Unluckily, by the end, this beautiful, quick, naturally-aspirated 500 horsepower beauty was nothing more than a stain on the track and a memory.

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