ONE OF THE GREATEST ?

With the help of works driver Nick Tandy, Total 911 looks back on the legacy of the 991 RSR, and how it shaped elite GT racing at Porsche over the past decade

Written by Kyle Fortune

Photography by Alisdair Cusick

These cars were racing up until about six weeks ago,” says Lee Maxted-Page of Porsche sales specialists Maxted-Page Limited, and competitively too, because the 911 RSR is still a consistent front-runner and race winner even as it’s retired by Porsche. The RSR lineage goes back decades at Porsche, but the arrival of the 991 RSR – unveiled in 2013 – is arguably one of the most successful models.

Revealed on the 50th anniversary of Porsche’s iconic 911, that significant milestone was highlighted by the launch RSR’s livery which, when viewed from above, featured the numbers ‘50’ and ‘911’. Inevitably, it’s gone through some necessary revisions in that time to keep it in front of the chasing pack, but essentially the RSR that bows out today owes everything to the car that was launched back in 2013. Within a few weeks of the 911 RSR greeting its public, the works Porsche AG Team Manthey would run the new car at the FIA WEC race at Silverstone. There it qualified 4th and 5th in class. Both cars completed the six-hour event, with the number 92 car driven by Marc Lieb, Richard Lietz and Romain Dumas finishing in 4th place, and the 91 car with Jörg Bergmeister, Patrick Pilet and Timo Bernhard taking 7th. An impressive start (and driver roster), but it would be the Le Mans 24 Hours – the jewel in the endurance racing calendar’s crown and arguably Porsche’s favourite race – where the 911 RSR would quickly assert its authority. There, the number 92 and 91 cars would take 1st and 2nd place in class, respectively, in the 2013 race, using the same driver groupings as its Silverstone debut. Over 24 hours around Circuit de la Sarthe the two 911 RSRs each covered 315 laps at the French classic, and finished a full lap ahead of the 3rd placed Aston Martin.

Few racing cars are as successful as the RSR proved in its debut season, nor can many hope to retain that level of competitiveness throughout their lifecycle. The RSR was, and did. In its various iterations the 911 RSR would go on to become one of the most successful racing cars in Porsche’s history. It would win driver, manufacturer and team titles all over the globe, take further Le Mans victories, as well as notable success at the Daytona 24 hours, with 911 RSRs taking wins at all the classic endurance events. Nick Tandy, then Porsche works driver, was part of the team who developed and subsequently raced the 911 RSR. He remembers it fondly. “If I look at one car that probably defines my career, it’s the 2013-16 RSR, because when I joined the factory squad, one of my main roles during my first year was development of this particular car. It was already racing in WEC that season, but there was still a lot of development going on in 2013 and a key part of my job was the testing of this RSR. I then, of course, went on to race in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and had a huge amount of success in it.”