It would have been nice for the RSR crew to make podium on the new car’s inaugural race at Silverstone, but Porsche works drivers Marc Lieb (Germany), Richard Lietz (Austria) and Romain Dumas (France) finished fourth in the GTE-Pro class. Still an impressive performance by the team and the new 991 RSR.

The second factory 911 RSR, driven by Joerg Bergmeister (Germany), Patrick Pilet (France) and Timo Bernhard (Germany), finished in sixth position. Porsche looked at this race as a warm up for the rest of the season. The principals are glad that both cars finished the race without any major technical problems. They started the race fro the second row.

Based on the seventh generation 911, the 991 RSR is powered by a 4.0-litre, 470 hp flat six engine. Compared to the previous version, the new car has become significantly uglier, but as long as it gets itself together and start winning races, that is not a big deal.

Wolfgang Hatz, Member of the Executive Board, Research and Development, Porsche AG, commented afterwards: “That was the first race for the new car and the new team. The organisation of the squad worked well. Of course, there are areas where we have room for improvement, but it’s like a football team, we first have to get everything running smoothly. Technically, everything worked on the 911 RSR apart from a one small thing which we will have fixed by the next race. As far as the performance is concerned, we still have room for improvement. Naturally, we also have to work on the car; it has a little too much oversteer. But all in all, I regard it as a positive weekend. It wouldn’t have been good if the car had experienced lots of problems, but that was not the case. We saw that the 911 RSR can turn consistently quick lap times over the race distance. Now if we do our homework, I think we’ll finish further up the field at the next races.”