new_bentley_continental_gt3_-_4

We haven’t even seen the new 2018 Bentley Continental GT in the metal yet and already the team from Crewe has assembled a beautiful GT3-class race car from the lightweight, aluminum bones set forth by the road car. Although most people would expect the racing version of the Continental to be making more power than its road-legal variant, at 626 bhp, the standard Continental makes significantly more power than allowed in the GT3 class. Instead, the new race car is fitted with a smaller 4.0-liter dry-sumped, bi-turbo, 4.0-liter V8 with 550 bhp on tap to replace the usual 6.0-liter bi-turbo W12.

To make the most of the smaller engine, the engineers at Bentley managed to strip 2,081 lbs out of the standard Continental, bringing total weight down to just around 2,866 lbs for the race car. Just think about that for a second… That’s over a ton of mass stripped from the street car through the use of carbon fiber, aluminum, titanium, and other exotic materials to make it eligible and competitive within its class.

Although Bentley will be campaigning two ‘works’ cars, Bentley will begin selling complete Continental GT3 race cars to privateer teams in June, 2018. The new Continental GT3 race car is currently undergoing testing and simulations to make sure it’s competitive for the European Blancpain GT Endurance Cup Series that kicks off at Monza in Italy on April 21st and 22nd, 2018.