WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DRIVE A PORSCHE 718 GT4 RS AT PIKES PEAK?
12.07.2022
The Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS. It’s arguably the performance car of the moment. The car Cayman fans have been begging Porsche to make for years. Recently, racing driver Robb Holland raced up the Pikes Peak hillclimb in a Clubsport version. This is his experience of the GT4 RS, lubricated by Motul.
Robb, the 718 Cayman GT4 RS hasn’t been long on sale. What was it like to drive at Pikes Peak?
This is a mega car. It’s so, so good. It's so much fun to drive up there. You can really play with the car at the limit and feel really confident that the car is not going to bite you or do anything evil, which allows you to push that much harder. From the testing that we had done all week long, it was definitely one of the most enjoyable cars I've ever driven up the hill.
This is the same car you use for the SRO Championship. What changes did you make to it for Pikes Peak?
When we run it in the SRO Championship, they have a balance of performance to try to equalise the performance between all the various manufacturers for GT4 cars. As this Porsche is such a strong car we've always been running with a very small restrictor and we’ve been carrying almost 100 kilos of extra weight in the car. Our ride height is also compromised. So, it's a compromised car we’re racing in SRO. This is the first time we've put it back into the spec that Porsche recommended. We pulled all the weight out and were able to pull the restrictor. The car is just absolutely fantastic.
Porsches always seems to perform well on Pikes Peak. Why do you think that is?
A lot of it, with the 911 especially any even the Cayman to a degree, is that you have a car that's got the weight balance where you want it. You want to be able to put the power down on the exits. And that's where Porsche has always been really strong. Both the 911 and the Cayman seem to have a natural affinity for the mountain. And they're great cars to drive. They're just so well balanced. With the 911s you can run really big power out of the turbos and get a car that puts the power down well but is still a really good balanced car for handling the faster sections.
You run Motul lubricants in your GT4 RS and mentioned before that it’s one less thing to worry about. Why is that?
Lubricants are a really big deal. There are so many things that are different about Pikes Peak and so many things that are at the extreme of what we do. The concern is always that we’ll have an issue. But since day one of using Motul on the mountain, it’s just one thing I never have to worry about. I ran a 900hp Corvette years ago, and we were seeing temperatures of over 300-degrees Fahrenheit. I knew Motul would hold together for the whole run, and we made it to the top of the mountain as the fastest Corvette ever. That’s literally due to the fact of using Motul. When you get a product like this that you trust and believe in makes your job that much easier.