Porsche announces 2019 GT3 R

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If there's anything Porsche is good at, it's building GT3 versions of its 911 Carrera. If there's anything it's really good at, it's then building customer race versions of that car. And that's what we have here: the GT3 R for 2019, based on the GT3 RS production model - which is a little like basing your house on the Winter Palace.

As you might expect, much is carried over - not least the mighty 4.0-litre naturally-aspirated flat-six, which is 'largely identical', but outputs an unrestricted 550hp (courtesy, you'd suspect, of the R's race exhaust system and bespoke engine management). Connected to it is Porsche's six-speed sequential 'box and an electro-hydraulic racing clutch, which drives the rear wheels via a mechanical slip differential.

The aluminium and steel spine of the 911 is the same too, but much else about the body is obviously different. For a start, most of it now - certainly the roof, front hood and fairing, wheel arches, doors, side and tail sections, as well as the rear lid and interior trim - is made of carbon-fibre composite. And the windows are polycarbonate.

This makes the single-seater helpfully lighter than its road-going sibling. It's also pushed onto the ground by the airflow even more insistently. The GT3 RS's already aggressive aero pack is just the jumping off point for the race car, where the distinctive wheel arch air vents and an almost 2m wide rear wing help to increase downforce.

Underneath there's a double wishbone front axle (it's multi-link at the back) with adjustable anti-roll bars and 4-way motorsport dampers. Predictably, you also get uprated brakes, with six-piston aluminium monobloc racing callipers gripping 390mm steel discs at the business end, with 370mm discs and four-piston callipers to the rear. Around them go 18-inch one-piece BBS alloys.

Elsewhere there are some new developments for 2019: you can now refill the 120-litre tank from either side; the driver's seat is now bolted at six points and offers better protection in the event of a collision; and the R features air conditioning for the first time. The price for all this? Well, it's €459,000 plus VAT - around four times the list price of the road car. But we'll go out on a limb now (not a very long one, admittedly) and say it's worth every penny.