Anyone going to the 991 day at Silverstone on Wednesday?
Discussion
Ok so I am sitting here at Silverstone and it's pretty busy. Plenty of 991s about. The yellow looks superb in the flesh as does the green gold colour- might have been tempted by that had I seen it before ordering.
Lunch in a mo which hopefully will resolve the hangover. Chinese new year celebrations last night got out of hand. And I am not even Chinese, nor was it Chinese new year.
Lunch in a mo which hopefully will resolve the hangover. Chinese new year celebrations last night got out of hand. And I am not even Chinese, nor was it Chinese new year.
SFO said:
celebrations for Chinese New Year lasts 14 days ... so you were still in the zone 
That's a relief then I'm not becoming a lush, just in touch with other cultures and their celebrations.Today was an excellent day out the office. In fact, I arrived quite early and was able to do some work from the restaurant whilst overlooking a sunny Porsche track and various tasty 991s. It gave me the opportunity to consider which colours best suit the 991 and in my view the car suits light colours.
The one I drove was White (which coincidentally is what I have ordered) and it looked good, but I was also taken by a lime gold one with Carrera Classic wheels which looked understated, slightly retro and very cool. The black one with Carrera Classic wheels did not, in my opinion, look as good as the 997 does in black.
The day started with lunch which was very good and (wisely) modest in volume. Previous trips to Porsche at Silverstone have been preceded by a visit to the cake shop in Towcester, which seemed like a good idea at the time, less good after a few spins on the low-friction circuit.
Before being let loose on the track we were put in a room with a temperature hovering around zero and subjected to a largely superfluous briefing about the facilities, including out of date video footage. I was not sure what the point was; the paid-for courses at the centre don't have a briefing and are no worse for it.
There was no apparent defined structure to the driving and I was able to choose what I did, and when. Hooning around the handling circuit seemed to feature quite heavily in my choice of activities, but we spent a good deal of time on the kick-plate too which I enjoyed more than I have done previously, in part because I learnt how to control a spinning car rather than preventing a spin in the first place. Of limited use on the road obviously.
The 991 PDK proved to be every bit as good on a track as it is on the road. Better probably. It is significantly different to drive hard than the 997. The 997 tends to under steer when provoked in a corner where the 991 is far better balanced. It is still possible to invoke under steer but over enthusiasm in bends is just as likely to produce over steer, which I found out first in a clumsy right hander and again in another right hander where I ended up exploring the limits of grip on gravel.
I found that Sport mode was about as dramatic as the gearbox needed to be. Sport Plus was just bloody annoying. Sure, if driving the car to its absolute limit on a full-size track when competing with other cars I can imagine it has a point. Otherwise, no. That said, leaving the gearbox to its own devices in Sport mode is not the ideal solution. There was one bend where the car insisted upon changing gear mid-corner, unsettling the car in the process. The only solution was to select manual, overriding the computer. In general, though, for the average driver (me) I think PDK is a better option than manual for getting from A to B quickly.
In the end I called it a day not because we’d run out of time but because the winter sun was becoming very low and it was difficult to see the track. I was also becoming tired and Chinese New Year was starting to take its toll.
I remain of the view that the 991 has improved significantly upon the 997. No element is on its own vastly improved but everything is a little better, and when all the improvements are combined the result is quite impressive.
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