Few cars on the road today have as wide a performance range as the Porsche 911. Starting out as a 379 hp (385 PS/283 kW) sports car, if you’re willing to spend (considerably) more you get one of the fastest production cars on earth around a race track.

And while the accomplishments of the 911 GT3 are nothing to sniff at, what does that performance actually look like when you compare it to the base model? CarWow brought them both to a (very short) race track to find out.

Unsurprisingly, the engineers and product planners at Porsche are very good at their jobs, and the GT3 offers higher performance on a track. Its 4.0-liter, naturally aspirated flat-six puts down 510 hp (517 PS/380 kW) and 347 lb-ft (470 Nm) of torque, which nets it a lap time that is 1.8 seconds faster than the standard car around the 0.9-mile (1.45 km) Llandow Circuit in Wales.

Read Also: Is The Porsche 911 GT3 Touring As Good As Sports Cars Get?

In the straight-line tests, meanwhile, the base 911 sprints to 60 mph (96 km/h) in just 3.7 seconds, hits 100 mph (161 km/h) in 8.7 seconds, and then gets back to zero from 100 mph in just 285 ft (87m). The GT3, meanwhile, shaves 0.3 seconds off the 60 sprint, 1.2 seconds off the 100 sprint, and 16 ft (5m) off the stopping distance. And the driving dynamics of the 911 GT3 are even more impressive.

“What an absolutely insane experience!” says host Mat Watson. “On a track, this is night and day. Forty grand? Spend it. Spend it! If you’re going to be spending a lot of time on track, spend, spend, spend the money.”

That exuberance comes with a caveat, though. On the road, Watson says he wouldn’t bother going for the £123,000 ($161,100 in the U.S.) car when the £83,000 ($101,200) base model exists.

“Do you know what? For, like, the entry-level car, this is all you need. This is all you need! Especially on the road,” says Watson. “And you can take it on a track day and you will have lots of fun in it. And I’ve taken one of these on a track day, battered it all day long: brakes are fine, tires are fine. Really, really, really good cars.”

Proof, then, that the GT3 is as impressive as it is because the standard 911 is such an enormously good starting point.