Weekend Drive with Hormazd Sorabjee: Go speed racer, go!

We are standing on hallowed ground. A place where champions have raced and history has been made. And history is about to be made again. No road-going car in production has ever lapped under the 2min mark and that’s what the target is. Welcome to India’s Buddh International Circuit, or BIC as we know it. This 5.125km track is the pinnacle of motor sport and speed. Setting a lap record here guarantees both man and machine the ultimate bragging rights.

For this, you need the ultimate driver piloting the ultimate machine. Narain Karthikeyan, India’s first Formula 1 driver, is back. This time, he’s behind the wheel of what is touted as the ultimate road-going track car in the world: The 992 Porsche 911 GT3 RS.

For Narain, BIC is familiar territory. He’s the only Indian driver to have raced here in the Indian GP, in 2011 and 2012. It’s with a ‘been there, done that’ feeling that Narain arrives at the BIC to meet the bright yellow 911 GT3 RS in the pit garage.

Narain has broken the production-car lap record at the BIC twice, and both times in a Porsche. The first time the F1 star set a new lap record was in November 2018 in his personal Porsche 911 GT3, with a lap time of 2m 07.629s. Then, a few months later, he obliterated the record by a good 7.5 seconds, driving a the monstrous 700hp 911 GT2 RS. His record time of 2m 00.266s still stands. But since then, there’s been a nagging itch to set a sub 2min lap time.

Narain gets his chance with the latest 911 GTR RS, a formidable track weapon that though 180hp down on the GT2 RS makes up with aerodynamic wizardry. It has an adjustable rear wing like on a Formula 1 car, that gives it leech-like grip to go insanely fast through corners.

It’s been two years since Narain last raced and he hasn’t been to the BIC since his record-breaking lap in 2019. But any doubts that Narain would be a bit rusty are blown away as he immediately gets to grips with what is the rawest and edgiest production 911 yet. The sound of the flat-six at 9,000rpm, reverberating off the empty grandstand on the start-finish straight, is spine-tingling. And with each successive lap, Narain breaks later and deeper into corners. He’s quickly in the groove, and lap times keep tumbling.

He is absolutely on the limit, carrying more speed through every corner to compensate for the slower speed down the straight. He’s bouncing hard off the kerbs, using every bit of track to shave of time wherever possible. Narain is uncharacteristically neat, driving with surgical precision and minimal steering inputs. Keeping it neat and tidy is the key, because with just 525hp, you can’t afford to scrub off speed.

Exiting the last corner, the GT3 RS gives a small twitch and shrieks past the start-finish line. My stopwatch says mission accomplished and race control officially confirms the time: 1 min 59.854s. It’s a new production-car lap record

Three Porsches, three lap records with the same driver who is soon turning 47 but is showing no signs of slowing down. As they say, Formula 1 drivers are a special breed of speed. So is the 911 GT3 RS.