Phil Farrell
Cheshire, UK
At the time of writing, I’ve had the GT3 nearly two months now. How time flies when you’re having fun. The car has now passed the 934 miles it required to class itself as run in and so once conditions permit, and I’m likely on a suitable private road, I’ll be able to give it some beans (to coin a phrase from a favourite Youtube channel of mine).
The car hasn’t been without issue. One of the exhaust actuators decided to keep throwing an error and so it’s been in for that. And there were a couple of rattles and a spontaneously cracking rear quarter glass. Having researched it, the glass issue is quite common on the cars that have the lightweight glass. There are a few theories as to the cause, but the main thing is that Porsche is aware and there were no questions asked. I wouldn’t have wanted to foot the £1,700 bill for a new piece of glass, that’s for sure. But in any case, OPC Bournemouth took the car in and lent me a rather nice 992 GTS cab while it was in, which performed admirably.
Luckily, we had a few crisp, winter days and so the roof got some good use, as did the heated everything that car was specced with.
Most of the running-in miles were done on one trip when the GT played Santa sled, taking Christmas gifts up to family in the north. No trip from the south to the north is ever complete these days without a drop into Caffeine & Machine at Stratford and even though the weather was changeable to say the least, a good drive was had by me and a friend. I then headed further north as he headed back home.
The trip back also gave me chance to assess the lights on the car. I’d opted for the standard lights because I prefer the aesthetics of the four dots, which look more 919 to me, rather than the splayed configuration that come with the matrix lights. And the PDLS+ on the previous generation GT3 didn’t really give you full functionality of PDLS+ for some reason, so there was a doubt in my mind that the same would apply to the 992. The lights were more than fine, but having now experienced the matrix lights in the loaner GTS, if I had my time again then I’d probably tick the matrix box. They really work in the same way as on the Cayenne on the 992 generation.
1 January 2024 also marked the start of my first year of full membership at Goodwood. So this last weekend a couple of friends and I headed up there for a blast up the South Harting hill climb, introduced to me by Phil Raby this time last year, and some breakfast at the Kennels. It was cold, but again the winter tyres did an admirable job of keeping the power down. And even on the somewhat undulating roads, shall we say, around Goodwood the suspension remained compliant. It did give me a great chance to get a shot of the car covered in Hampshire’s finest road grime. Nothing a blast of Gtechniq didn’t sort out within 30 minutes of getting home, though.
I’m hoping to get the car’s first track day in at the end of March. Hopefully the weather will have improved by then, such that I can get the winters off and get the Cups on the car, ready for the start of the track day season. For me this year, everything is leading up to getting back to Spa as next winter draws in.