Godzilla to roar at the 'ring?
Quarter of a million quid will buy you a GT3-spec Nissan GT-R to put those Porsche beating 'ring laps to the test
Unlike the V8, rear-drive GT-R GT1 (as driven by Riggers last year and, no, he hasn't shut up about it yet!) the GT3 is much closer in mechanical spec to the road car we all know and love. So it's got the same 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 - down on power a tad at 530hp compared with the MY2012 road car's 550hp - driving through a Hewland six-speed sequential gearbox. Ohlins adjustable dampers are among the driver-tweakable settings.
The car had its formal race debut a couple of weeks back at the Dubai 24 Hours, qualifying third and proving on the pace of GT3 rivals like the Mercedes SLS GT3, Audi R8 GT3 and ever-present Porsches. A crash early in the race knocked the GT-R out of contention but its lap times proved competitive and with the car now officially on sale the potential is there for some long-running rivalries - those Porsche scaring 'ring lap times spring to mind - to finally get resolved in a straight fight. The marketplace for tasty looking GT3 cars was already pretty broad - Nissan's arrival adds yet another choice for privateer teams and, visually, looks ready to take the competition round the back of the paddock for a right good kicking. Whether it can do the same on the track remains to be seen.
Can anyone find the technical regs for the GT3 cars? All I can find on the FIA site is a very vague document (257A App J) which doesn't get very technical at all.
GT3 cars are actually faster than GT2 cars, despite being cheaper and more road-car based. That's because they have freer power regulations (a 458 GT2 is just under 500BHP with a GT3 being around 530BHP) and they are allowed larger wings. The GT2 cars are lighter though.
4x the price of the standard GTR - am I missing something?
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