On track: 2025 Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid shotgun ride

Few people are better positioned to chart the development of Porsche’s road to electrification – culminating in the 2025 Porsche 911 GTS T-Hybrid – than German racer and Porsche ambassador Jörg Bergmeister.

After all, Bergmeister was there at the very beginning when Porsche began experimenting with electrification on the 2010 911 GT3 R Hybrid.

Almost 15 years later, we’re lining up at Porsche’s small 2.5km-long Weissach test track in an all-wheel drive prototype 911 GTS T-Hybrid.

We’re supposed to be hot-lapping in the rear-drive version but cold temperatures and light drizzle means the track is turning treacherous.

Not that Herr Bergmeister is worried.

“We’ll see how much grip we find,” he says, before engaging launch control and bouncing off the limiter.

The launch itself is as violent as you’d imagine a near-400kW 911 would be, but the angry sound of the new T-Hybrid means, to our ears, the 3.6-litre does a decent impression of something naturally-aspirated rather than turbocharged.

Up to fourth in a blink of an eye and it’s the linearity of the power delivery which feels relentless.

Into the long right-hander and Bergmeister finds the grip threshold and pushes and pushes.

“It’s 911 Turbo S-quick through here and much quicker than the old car pretty much everywhere,” he says.

In the hands of the endurance sports car champion, class winner at the Le Mans 24 Hours and outright victor of the Daytona 24 Hour, the 911 GTS T-Hybrid dances, changing direction like a lightweight sports car, while the carbon ceramic brakes show no sign of wilting, nor the Pirelli P Zero street tyres throwing in the towel.

“The response down low and at the top of the rev range is just incredible. It’s just so much quicker – and can you believe the new 911 Turbo is even quicker?”

We didn’t get the chance to drive ourselves, nor tease any more details from Bergmeister about just what engineers have done to step up the performance of the flagship 911 Turbo.

But it’s remarkable in the age of the Tesla Model S Plaid that the 911 GTS still feels stupidly quick – even quicker, dare we say, than Porsche’s claimed figures.

After another even more rapid lap the conditions get damper and more slippery and the drift angles pulled wider and wider before our time as human ballast is over.

The 911 GTS T-Hybrid seems angrier, faster with mid-range punch the last car couldn’t dream of.

Did we miss having an all-electric driving range? Not in the least.

The 50kg weight penalty, meanwhile, seems well worth the extra performance.

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