Can a two wheel drive GT-R be better than an all wheel drive GT-R?

Yes, yes it can. At a point, all wheel drive in an A-B drag race on a prepared surface, and even unprepared becomes a disadvantage. Things like weight transfer, drag, the fact that the fast/fast cars just about carry the front wheels out to the 60 foot. Its quicker, but then is it really a Nissan GT-R? The Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 to R34, then the R35 GT-R have all been all wheel drive. They use a system called ATTESA to split the power out to the wheels.

Two T's one S, but that is getting into pedantics. The advantages of the ATTESA system are that the cars act rear wheel drive until they get some slippage, then the center transfer case starts to lock up, and power is transferred to the front. The issue being the fronts can only really handle so much power. The OEM front diff are open diffs, so in reality, we should say the cars are 3 wheel drive, unless you add an aftermarket front differential. The thing that breaks hard parts just about 100% of the time is wheel hop. When you lift the front wheels off the ground, in a fast/fast all wheel drive car, the parts do bad things when they come down. On the R32 to R34 you want to load the car against the hand brake, with the clutch to take up any slop in the front. If you don't you can/will eventually spit parts of the front spider out of the case. Dumping the clutch, with not loading it up is a recipe for front diff death. Yes, been there, done that got the T-shirt.

All the fastest drag race cars are rear wheel drive. Its just been recently that any Nissan Skyline that is all wheel drive has broke into the 6's. The rear drive tube frame cars have been in the 6's for many years.

George Dodworth is a staple, a hero, and a legend in the GTR community, and after this event he can tack “pioneer” onto his GTR resumè. George made the bold decision to convert his 2009 Nissan GTR (which is famously AWD), into a 2-wheel-drive only setup for GTR World Cup 2021. While you’ll really just have to watch the video to understand the rollercoaster of events that transpired, we can expect that this change will be received with mixed emotions. Sacrilegious to some but exciting for others, regardless George and T1R are taking the inevitable steps required to catapult this platform farther and farther into uncharted territory. George knew it would be a gamble, and at this power level there is no such thing as “things just working right”, but we are happy to say that we are absolutely impressed by what we’ve seen so far. We are very curious to see where the data they gather leads, and we are hoping that TX2K21 sets the stage for some untapped potential!