Heroic GR Yaris Chases Down Defiant Porsche 718 GT4 At Nurburgring

The Toyota GR Yaris is a three-door hatchback that continues to impress. We’ve seen the pint-sized three-cylinder outperform cars in drag races before but now, here’s another stock example outpacing a Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 at the Nurburgring.

There’s one problem, though – the Porsche driver wasn’t letting the Toyota pass.

As you can see in the video above, courtesy of GreatMotors from YouTube, the Toyota GR Yaris has a faster pace than the yellow 718 GT4. Despite being less powerful, the GR Yaris driver appears to have a better race track experience than the one inside the Porsche.

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On public race tracks, such as the Nurburgring, there’s an unwritten rule – or a gentlemen’s agreement, if you may – that cars with a faster pace have the right to go through. Granted, it’s a public track and you have all the right to move at your own pace, but when there’s a faster car behind, you have to move to the right and let them through on your left.

On many occasions in the video, the Toyota driver was signaling the Porsche driver to let the former through but to no avail. There were times when the GR Yaris had to brake prematurely because of the Porsche.

This doesn’t mean that the GR Yaris is a faster car, though. The 718 Cayman GT4, with its naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat-six derived from the 992-generation Porsche 911, is way more powerful than the GR Yaris and its turbocharged 1.6-liter three-pot mill.

However, a great driver running on proper tires (in this case, a set of Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2) will outpace a more powerful car driven by a driver with less track experience.

In a parallel universe where the Porsche gave way to the Toyota, we would have seen a more enjoyable hot lap from the little Yaris. Hopefully, in that parallel universe, the GR Yaris is available on US shores, side-by-side with the newly introduced GR Corolla.