LANZANTE MAKES A ROAD-CONVERTED PORSCHE 911 GT1 SWEETER THAN EVER
One of the cool things about the GT1 race cars of the 1990s and early 2000s was that the automakers who participated had to build a few street-legal versions. So some of the fastest race cars in the world were actual cars you could own and drive on the road. Well, a very select few with the means and dedication to drive a race car on the street could. Even with a few official street versions, though, at least one owner decided they wanted their street-legal version to be an actual race model. Lanzante Limited, a company known for both high-end racing and road cars, made that possible with this 1997 Porsche 911GT1 Evo, and now it has completed work on the same car again to make it a little more livable.
It Has Subtle But Significant Changes
The first time Lanzante worked on this GT1, which is chassis 117, the clear priority was to restore it and make it so that the race car could be legally registered and driven. Besides that, it was still pretty much a race car with a rather bare interior and full racing bucket seats. The paint was plain silver with some exposed carbon fiber parts and even a number of decals. For its second visit, Lanzante has made some refinements. The shop repainted it in Porsche's Yachting Blue with silver wheels. Some exposed carbon fiber is still visible, but it's less noticeable against the dark blue.
The interior, though, has the most changes. The racing seats are gone in place of what are surely more comfortable and easier to access buckets with more mild bolsters. They have been covered in grey leather and black and white houndstooth cloth. To go with the seats, Lanzante fitted leather-wrapped pads and covers to parts of the roll cage, and the racing harness has changed from the bright blue ones it had a number of years ago to black ones. Other bits of trim have been toned down, too, such as a switch from red door latch handles to silver, and red grab handles to black. It seems the shifter has been switched to the GT1 road car's unit rather than the plain black race car version.
This Car Was A Successful Racer
The 911 GT1 was a serious contender in the 1990s wherever it raced, but chassis 117 had a particularly good run. It competed mainly in Canada with Bytzek Motorsports. In 31 races where it competed, it won 13 of them, and it won the Canadian GT Championship from 1999 to 2001. It also raced in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, though it finished in 41st. At some point, it ended up in private hands, and the owner took it to Lanzante for the restoration and road conversion. That process started in 2014, and only a year after the work was finished, it went to auction by RM Sotheby's. It crossed the block with a price of more than $3 million. The car is probably worth substantially more now, since an official "Strassenversion" GT1 sold for more than $12 million in 2021.