Circuito Monteblanco’s second turn is too tight. Lars Kern moves away from me. He is driving the Porsche factory development car that I am riding in around the track. It doesn’t matter though. Attack Mode gives the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT 1,019 horsepower for ten seconds when you pull on the button on the right side of the steering wheel. If I press the gas pedal hard, the car will speed out of the turn, correcting my mistake. It is a huge animal
The question “What if?”inspired Turbo GT development. How about a track vehicle from an electric sedan?”. A small team at Porsche worked together to make the car. It was a real “skunkworks” project. The board, not lower management, ran the team. It was the world’s fastest four-door car, electric or not.
As part of the launch of the newly updated Taycan, we did a few runs at the Circuito Monteblanco, which is just outside of Seville, Spain. It helped me see.
The Turbo GT is built on the Turbo S and has a new silicon-carbide inverter for the rear motor. This gives the car more power, up to 1,019 horsepower during launch control and for ten seconds in “Attack Mode.” When nothing else is going on, the power output is 777 horsepower.
To go along with this power, the aerodynamics have been changed. The Turbo GT version has a tuned active suspension system, bigger wheels and tires, and a fixed rear wing. The only thing that might be too dramatic is taking out the back seats with the Weissach Package. The power number is similar to that of the Turbo S, even though it is bigger. But these changes have led to a whole new electric performance car.
The Taycan Turbo GT is scary, even though suspension electronics have made cars with very high horsepower easier to handle. The car weighs more than 5,000 pounds and has more than 1,000 horsepower even when it is in its lightest form. Even though I don’t know much about physics, I do know that force is equal to mass times acceleration, which has a lot of M and A in it.
Still, the Turbo GT is fairly easy to get to. For something that’s supposed to record ridiculously fast lap times, it’s surprisingly friendly and easy to talk to. It’s easy to see right away what a huge grip level is possible. The new Pirelli P-Zero R tires that come with the Turbo GT do a great job of handling the car’s huge weight and power, but the Trofeo RS tires that you can choose to add really bring it to life. It needs to be clearer to turn in Grab. You can always go faster, even if you think you’ve run as fast as you can. The car spins really well when you let go of the gas in the middle of a turn. It acts quickly.
If not hundreds of pounds less, the Turbo GT feels lighter than it is on either tire. The Porsche Active Ride suspension system has hydraulic motor-pump units connected to each damper that can put force on the body when it is fully active. The 800-volt battery in the Taycan powers the machine, which can quickly produce 2,248 pounds of force. Because of this, the Turbo GT doesn’t roll, pitch, or dive very much. (The car turns because it doesn’t take into account how much the tires have sagged, but the body stays perfectly level.)
Smart tuning makes it feel more natural than you might think, but Active Ride gives you a lot of grip by controlling the loads separately at each bend. On top of that, the suspension is almost perfect. There are a lot of rumble strips and a few tall steps in Monteblanco. The Turbo GT can handle being thrown over at very high speeds with ease.
If moving a car is just a race between grip and horsepower, then both sides are strong. That’s great. At high speeds, the Turbo GT feels very solid, but as it speeds through slow turns and chicanes, there’s no sign of how hard the car is trying to get traction. The car always feels stable thanks to its great mechanical and aerodynamic grip (the Turbo GT Weissach Package makes 485 lbs at 190 mph).
At Monteblanco, the best turn is a quick right that goes up quickly and then gets tight near the bottom. You’ll need a lift or a light brake because the turn puts a lot of force on the car. Everything is easy for the Turbo GT to handle. It is amazing.
The Turbo GT stops amazingly well, especially considering how heavy and fast it is, and it does this while constantly changing the ratio of friction to regenerative braking.
Yes, quickness. This is where Porsche told us to stop and start the Turbo GT. Kern thinks that if you ran the whole length of the straight, you would slow down for turn one at about 175 mph. It was too fast for the situation. You may still reach about 120 mph before letting go of the chute, even if you use launch control and stop more than halfway down the straight.
It actually takes a lot of work to start the Turbo GT. Porsche says the Weissach Pack can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.1 seconds, but the first time I did it, my eyes blurred for a very long time. In just over six seconds, you can reach 124 mph. That’s about how long it would take me in my Volkswagen GTI without a clutch to reach 60 mph.
Speed and power are just showy features of the Turbo GT. It has a lot more to offer. On the track, it’s very comfortable. It’s still fun, and the grip makes me think of the best times I’ve had driving on a racetrack.
Kern thinks that it would be good for us as race car drivers if the car worked well. It’s really that easy. Another thing we like about driving is having a car that is comfy and easy to control at high speeds.
Bad things? The nice bucket seats you see here are not available in the United States. They look a little silly in this car, but the car itself is a little silly, and they give you extra feedback through the seat of your pants.
Still, this is only meant for a small group of people. There is a very small market for an electric race car with four doors that costs $230,000, but people will always want the best. Even though we couldn’t test-drive the Turbo GT on the road, the dynamic suspension should make daily driving no harder than with any other Taycan model unless you take out the back seats.
COMMENTS