What hits you is the spooky matter-of-factness. The unadorned delivery of a stunning observation before moving on indifferently. Very demure, very mindful, very German racing driver.
“The thing is,” says Jörg Bergmeister sotto voce, sitting at a side table during the recent launch event for the updated Porsche 911 GT3 at Hockenheim, “that on a lap like this, you’re pushing harder than even in qualifying.”
I’m still wondering precisely how that could be possible when the coup de grâce lands: “Because it doesn’t matter if the car doesn’t come back.”
There tends to be a golden nugget in every interview, and in the case of JB chatting about his hectic life as a Porsche development gun, this is surely it. Bergmeister, the Nürburgring, death or glory possibly for man, certainly for machine.
The 6ft 4in economics grad, who for decades raced and won in all manner of competition 911s, has been a brand ‘ambassador’ for some time and is still in the thick of it.
The car-loving public know of his exploits because when Porsche proudly publishes a ’Ring time for a new product, it’s often Bergmeister who did the legwork. Journalists know him because, at some point, if we’re lucky, we might find ourselves riding shotgun as he seemingly rips up physics.
Porsche wheels JB out often. It might be a Carrera GTS launch at Palm Springs or GT3 RS at Silverstone but the show is the same: stunning economy of movement and trail-braking so acute that JB is only getting stuck into the pedal at the point when most of us would be rolling off it.
However, the blood-chilling “doesn’t come back” comment relates to a solo undertaking, which was the Nordschleife lap-time attempt for the current GT3 RS, back in 2022.
On the day, Bergmeister conjured a 6min 50.7sec and it was enough to greatly please everyone, including the higher-ups. But not the softly spoken, usually smiling 48-year-old, who felt he could crack 6min 50sec by turning into Tiergarten more or less flat at 285kph, if only big boss Andy Preuninger was happy to risk losing the chassis. (Reader, he was.)
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