If you want a Porsche 911 to set a lap record, Jörg Bergmeister is your man
What hits you is the spooky matter-of-factness. The unadorned delivery of a stunning observation before moving on indifferently. Very demure, very mindful, very German racing driver.
“The thing is,” says Jörg Bergmeister sotto voce, sitting at a side table during the recent launch event for the updated Porsche 911 GT3 at Hockenheim, “that on a lap like this, you’re pushing harder than even in qualifying.”
I’m still wondering precisely how that could be possible when the coup de grâce lands: “Because it doesn’t matter if the car doesn’t come back.”
There tends to be a golden nugget in every interview, and in the case of JB chatting about his hectic life as a Porsche development gun, this is surely it. Bergmeister, the Nürburgring, death or glory possibly for man, certainly for machine.
The 6ft 4in economics grad, who for decades raced and won in all manner of competition 911s, has been a brand ‘ambassador’ for some time and is still in the thick of it.
The car-loving public know of his exploits because when Porsche proudly publishes a ’Ring time for a new product, it’s often Bergmeister who did the legwork. Journalists know him because, at some point, if we’re lucky, we might find ourselves riding shotgun as he seemingly rips up physics.
Porsche wheels JB out often. It might be a Carrera GTS launch at Palm Springs or GT3 RS at Silverstone but the show is the same: stunning economy of movement and trail-braking so acute that JB is only getting stuck into the pedal at the point when most of us would be rolling off it.
However, the blood-chilling “doesn’t come back” comment relates to a solo undertaking, which was the Nordschleife lap-time attempt for the current GT3 RS, back in 2022.
On the day, Bergmeister conjured a 6min 50.7sec and it was enough to greatly please everyone, including the higher-ups. But not the softly spoken, usually smiling 48-year-old, who felt he could crack 6min 50sec by turning into Tiergarten more or less flat at 285kph, if only big boss Andy Preuninger was happy to risk losing the chassis. (Reader, he was.)
The thought alone will elicit a nervous snort from anybody who knows the Nordschleife. Tiergarten, an uphill kink, is the sting in the tail of the endless Döttinger Höhe straight.
In the quest for a white-hot lap time, it is the denouement, a moment of make or break worth committing to only if you’ve nailed every apex, every shift and carried every drop of momentum through the preceding 20km. And even then.
So yes, there is pressure. And no, JB doesn’t lift. But if you watch the sensational on-board footage, you’ll see that at the entry to Tiergarten the brake trace burbles up a touch and JB loses 5kph. So what exactly is going on here?
During the testing seasons at the Nürburgring, Bergmeister stays at the Dorint hotel and has dinner with the engineers three or so nights a week. It is during these evenings that some of the juiciest developmental ideas are dreamed up and discussed.
For the aero-festooned ‘992’ GT3 RS, one such idea was that the driver should be able to slap shut the flap in the DRS-style rear wing even when at full throttle. But how to do it?
There were, says JB, simply no spare buttons left on the steering wheel, what with all the dials for damper rates, and there also already being a button to open the DRS.
So instead, at high speed, you can close the flap by feathering the brake pedal with your left foot, being careful to do it lightly enough that you do not provoke the meeting of pad and disc.
“You just tip the brake,” says Bergmeister, “so you’re already turning in to the corner on high downforce, basically.”
Naturally JB did the business and his 6min 49.3sec time is testament to both the scope of a true road-racing 911 and an inspiring display of commitment and skill in a one-take scenario.
Just as fascinating is his brutal schedule. During the testing season, Bergmeister travels from his home near Düsseldorf to Nürburg, where he stays during the week.
A day’s work can comprise up to 30 laps, which are all flat out because when you’re working on set-up, anything less means “you don’t get a proper read, so they’re always high-risk laps”.
On a load-collecting programme, stints are long, though even two laps is 15 minutes of pure focus and huge physical bombardment in the case of the GT3 RS, with its near-900kg of downforce.
To do this year after year, you quite literally need to be one of the most skilled and safest pairs of hands in the business, yet I can’t resist asking: Jörg, are you a risk-taker? “When it comes down to it, yes.”
