Porsche 911 996 Carrera Cup Racing Series and Champions

996 Carrera Cup Champions & Results

Two weeks after the 996 Carrera, the 996 GT3 Cup car was introduced for the next year’s Porsche Supercup series. Interestingly, the engine in the 996 GT3 didn’t share anything with the 996 Carrera engine, but was more of a water-cooled version of the 993 engine. While all the 993 Cup cars had 3.8-litre engines, the 996 Cup car had a 3.6-litre powerplant. The power was up from 993’s 228 kW to 265 kW. The GT3 naming was new and showed that the car was placed below the GT2 cars. There was no GT3 class in FIA races like there had been classes for GT1 and GT2.

While the Carrera Cup Germany and the Carrera Cup France racing series were still held with the 993 Cup cars in 1998, the Porsche Supercup was ran with the new 996 GT3 Cup cars. The Supercup races were held on 9 F1 weekends (out of 16 F1 weekends). The 1998 Supercup series was dominated by Manthey Racing. Patrick Huisman won 6 races. Second in the season was Oliver Mathai (also Manthey Racing). Mathai had lost the Supercup title a year before to Huisman although he had the same amount of points (but lost with the number of race victories). Third place in the 1998 Supercup went to Altfrid Heger (1993 Supercup winner).