It is not often that you get to hear an old Nurburgring-Nordschleife record being broken, yet that has just happened, leaving Porsche preening with pride. The Porsche Taycan Turbo GT electric sports car with a Manthey Kit, has just set a new record by lapping the 20.832 km circuit in a time of 06:55.533 minutes while blasting around the iconic circuit. The talking point is the Manthey kit it was sporting, which has obliterated the old record by 9 seconds. It was also 12 seconds faster than the previous fastest lap set by the car. The new Manthey Kit is the result of a collab between Porsche and Manthey.
“The small but impactful project team from Manthey and Porsche has succeeded in transferring the Manthey DNA into a kit for electric vehicles. This effort has culminated in an impressive new Nordschleife record,” said Kevin Giek, Head of the Taycan model line.
The record breaking effort at Nurburgring-Nordschleife took quite a bit of doing and was possible because of the Manthey kit, which has been specially built for the circuit. In case you were wondering, Porsche has revealed that the kit is already available for various Porsche GT models. The Manthey Kit can be ordered from June as a retrofit kit. Notably, Porsche had rolled out this kit for an electric sports car for the first time.
This kit has allowed the carmaker to boost performance of the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT with Weissach Package across a number of parameters to a much higher level. The Manthey Kit offers a boosted aerodynamic downforce, modified suspension and a power-packed drivetrain. Various systems have been retuned and designed for the lightweight wheels developed for the Manthey Kit.
The new Manthey Kit features a number of changes to the powertrain leading to an optimised high-voltage battery. The alterations to the control unit and pulse inverters caused maximum discharge current while driving to jump from 1,100 to 1,300 amps.
Alterations were also made to the suspension and even the aerodynamics have been modified, ensuring a much faster performance without affecting any other parts of the car.
The optimisation of the suspension and drive system has made possible a power output that is 20 kW higher than the standard model. The changes to the aerodynamic system has boosted the downforce by over three times (at 200 km/h, downforce boosted from 95 to 310 kg).
The benefit to be derived from this is that it enables the user to have optimum vehicle stability even during higher cornering speeds. Among the other critical components that made it all possible are a fresh rear wing that sports enlarged end plates, a high-performance rear diffuser with extended fins, bigger underbody air deflectors, carbon aerodiscs on the rear wheels, and an optimised front diffuser.
The performance upgrade for the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT can be felt in actual driving as was explained by Porsche development driver Lars Kern, "On the Nordschleife, you can feel how much more stability and confidence the car offers in fast sections and when braking."