Porsche has set the record for the fastest lap time of any production car with a manual transmission on the Nürburgring Nordschleife racetrack.

It’s also the first time a stick-shifted production car lapped the iconic German track in less than seven minutes.

Porsche brand ambassador Jörg Bergmeister piloted the Porsche 911 GT3 and lapped the track in a time of 6:56.294 minutes.

What’s more impressive, this lap time was achieved on the full length of the track, which is 20.832 kilometres long. The previous record of 7:01:300 was achieved on the shortened 20.6-kilometre version of the track, which Porsche said shaves off a little more than four seconds.

“The new 911 GT3 inspires even more confidence at the limit than the previous model. I was faster in almost every corner,” Bergmeister said in a news release. “We learned a lot from the 911 GT3 RS, especially with the chassis. The car is much more stable on bumps and over the curbs. And thanks to the eight per cent shorter gear ratio, there is noticeably more drive from the rear axle when accelerating with the same engine power. Even if it would have been a few seconds faster with the seven-speed PDK – with the six-speed manual gearbox I definitely had more to do on the fast lap – and it was therefore even more fun.”

The 911 GT3 has 510 hp.

The record time was achieved on a sunny day with temperatures of 12 C and a track temperature of 27 C. The car rode on road-legal Michelin Pilot Sport Cup2 R tires, measuring 255/35 R20 at the front and 315/30 R21 at the rear.

“More and more 911 GT3 customers are opting for the six-speed manual transmission. And more and more often we are asked by these customers how fast a 911 GT3 with manual transmission would be on the Nordschleife,” said Andreas Preuninger, director of GT model line, in the release. “We have now answered this question and – although we know that the variant with PDK is significantly faster – we drove our official lap time with a manual six-speed gearbox. Even without the automated, super-fast and precise gearshifts of the PDK, and with a conventional instead of electronically controlled limited-slip differential, the new 911 GT3 shaved around 3.6 seconds off the time of its predecessor with PDK.”

The previous manual transmission lap record at the track was achieved by Lance Arnold in a 2017 Dodge Viper ACR. You can watch it happen from the cockpit on YouTube.

The fastest lap time, as of this writing, in any production car was set in 2024 by Maro Engel in a Mercedes-AMG One, with a time of 6:29:090 minutes. You can read about that achievement here.

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