Q&A with Porsche’s Jens Walther on the new Cayman GT4 Clubsport

The customers asked, and Porsche listened.

The German marque announced the addition of a new race car to its Motorsports fleet with the unveiling of the Cayman GT4 Clubsport at the recent Los Angeles Auto Show.The 385 horsepower mid-engine entry level racer is based on the successful street-legal Cayman GT4 sports car, though the Clubsport is not legal for street use. It’s designed for several levels of competition from amateur and club racing, up to the Grand Sport (GS) class of the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge. Bodymotion Racing and CJ Wilson Racing – which in the past have focused their attention on the Street Tuner (ST) class of the Continental Tire Challenge – recently announced they will be campaigning the new car in GS in 2016.The GT4 Clubsport features a modified six-speed Porsche double clutch PDK transmission with shift paddles on the steering wheel and a mechanical rear-axle locking differential specifically for racing (the street car comes with a manual transmission). The lightweight strut front axle is taken from its big brother, the 911 GT3 Cup car, which is campaigned in 20 one-make Porsche championships around the world. The GT4 Clubsport is powered by a 3.8-liter flat-six engine, positioned directly behind the driver’s seat.Tipping the scales at just 2,866 pounds, the Cayman GT4 Clubsport, is a virtually turn-key racecar, delivered from the factory with a welded-in safety cage, a racing bucket seat as well as a six-point harness. In the USA, the new racecar is available directly from Porsche Motorsport North America for $165,000.Jens Walther, President and CEO of Porsche North America, recently shared his enthusiasm for the Cayman GT4 Clubsport with IMSA.com.Coming off the success of the Cayman GT4, why did Porsche decided to come up with a turnkey racing version of this car?“The Cayman GT4 street car was developed, like all other road-going Porsche GT versions, at the motorsports department at Weissach. It was during that process, when we actually went through the car, that we learned this was a great platform to start racing. We’ve never really had such a good platform to start with.”What is the target audience for the GT4 Clubsport?“Ever since the further development of the 911 GT3 Cup, we realized that there is a need for an entry-level product. I always refer to Cayman GT4 Clubsport as the legitimate successor of the 996 GT3 Cup, because the 996 GT3 Cup still had an ABS and a street car H-pattern gearbox. It was easy for somebody who didn’t have a lot of racing experience to jump in and learn the car. With the 911 GT3 Cup becoming more and more a pure race car, that entry-level market really was not satisfied with our product line. So with the GT4 Clubsport, we really go back to an entry-level product where somebody who just wants to join racing can enter the car and see a lot of similarities to the street car. As you go along and learn the car more and more, you can switch up to electronics aids, like ABS or traction control. As it’s built with the PDK transmission, we allow the entry-level driver to learn the car and the dynamics of the race track and not worrying too much about the gears. It’s very reliable and very good in terms of maintenance.”What was behind the decision to have the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Grand Sport (GS) class as one of the proposed racing venues for the GT4 Clubsport?“We have been approached by customers who have been running Porsche cars – modified street cars – in the past. Ever since there were rumors of a new Cayman, they asking if we would help them with that car. We believe this also comes into the positioning of the car as an entry level product. Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge GS is kind of an entry into endurance racing, so we believe that the GT4 Clubsport, as a base car, would be a very good fit… Customers have to make some changes, and the IMSA rules for that category allow the customer to modify the car, but generally it is a very good platform to start with for building a race car.”Why did Porsche feel there was a need to develop a turnkey racing version of the Cayman GT4?“Since the street cars are getting more sophisticated, with a lot of electronics and computer ECUs in the cars, as a manufacturer we have to look at products that are more ready to go racing than in the past. Until recently, you could go to a dealer, buy a car and modify it into a race car. Today, with all the electronics, you might take off a door and it will create a failure code when you build it into a race car. The technological developments today hinder you from turning street cars into race cars. This is why more and more manufacturers choose a route to prepare cars that are closer to race cars.”Porsche Caymans also won five races in ST in 2015 with two different teams. How do the two cars compare?“The cars being raced in ST were built on the last generation Cayman, and they started their life as a street car. They were never really prepared for the race track in areas such as mounting points for the roll cage and things like that. Even in its street car version, the next-generation Cayman GT4 is racier, and has a lot more DNA from our GT cars. The GT4 Clubsport is a full racecar, where we reinforced the body to allow mounting points for the roll cage; we have a mechanical limited-slip differential set up for track use; plus we’ve got all the electronic aids in a race version application. ABS has 12 different switch positions. Things like that really show that the car was designed as a racecar from the beginning, compared to the last generation Cayman street car that’s winning races in ST – which is in the spirit of ST, of course.”After the success of the Cayman GT4, how is the initial response to the racing GT4 Clubsport?“Very positive. We already had a lot of interest in the car after some rumors leaked out in Geneva earlier this year after the launch of the GT4 street car. There is a lot of excitement in the market, both from club racing but also from existing Porsche teams who want to expand their programs into entry level. People have been waiting for Porsche to go racing under $200,000 ready to race.”We’ve already had two teams – Bodymotion Racing and CJ Wilson Racing – announced plans to race the GT4 Clubsport, with others rumored to be on their way. How many cars to you expect to be racing in GS in 2016?“Due to the late arrival of the car – due to the long development of the car – basically we were not able to announce the car earlier than Los Angeles. We believe we will have from five to seven cars in 2016 in GS, which for us is a very good number to start with. We’ll see how the car fits into the class and how the performance level of the class will develop. Hopefully, we’ll see a couple more coming later in the year.”