Ben Keating pilots the SRT® Viper GT3-R in the GT Daytona class with the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship. He recently competed in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, which marked the competitive debut of the Viper GT3-R. His account of the race is documented in the following story.
While we didn’t have the Daytona finish we had hoped for, we brought the car home in one piece and crossed the finish line. And in a 24-hour race, that’s an accomplishment in itself. I keep reminding myself that our ViperExchange.com SRT® Viper GT3-R is a brand new car. It is chassis No. 1, the only one built so far, and Daytona was our first race outing. I have to temper my expectations.
There is so much involved with a 24-hour race. You don’t go to that race without a belief that you have a chance at winning. It’s my favorite race, and if I could only do one race a year, it would be the Rolex 24 at Daytona. It’s such a unique environment and event. I love it.
A new series
The Rolex 24 at Daytona was the first race of the new TUDOR United SportsCar Championship. It’s very exciting to have one series now. I love racing and the competition. There were 67 cars on the track at Daytona, and 28 of those were in our GT Daytona class. I aim to be the privateer that races at the top level. I love being in the most competitive field and racing at the top level.
Last year, I had to drive a competitive make in the American Le Mans Series, because of class structure. I am thrilled beyond words to be back racing a Viper this year. Being the country’s Viper sales volume leader, through ViperExchange.com, I want to race what I sell. I am passionate about the Viper and just love the car.
The Rolex 24 at Daytona
It’s hard to fathom a 24-hour race. A typical sprint event is two hours, 45 minutes. You can watch that on TV and get a decent feel for the race. But you cannot get a feel for the 24 Hours at Daytona unless you are there. The environment is just electric. After you’ve been racing for six hours, it’s hard to believe that you have FOUR times that amount still left to go. At 2 a.m., you are just to the halfway point. You go to sleep for a few hours and realize that every one of those cars has been out there non-stop, running full tilt the entire time. The cars take a beating like that for 24 hours straight, without a break. It’s just remarkable.
This year marked the fourth time I have competed in the Rolex 24 at Daytona. I’ve worked with different teams, and it’s great to be with the Riley team. It is a very professional organization and very well run. They have so much history and knowledge in sports car racing, so having that on my side is amazing. They are extremely good at what they do and they want to win. It’s nice to be part of a group where everybody wants to win.
We had four drivers for the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Along with Jeroen Bleekemolen and me, we added Sebastiaan Bleekemolen (Jeroen’s brother) and Emmanuel Collard for the twice-around-the-clock event. I drove about six and a half hours total, or seven stints in the car.
We were running seventh or eighth in our class around 3 a.m., when we had a clutch failure. It’s one of those things that will not show up as a problem until you’ve run that hard for that long. It wouldn’t occur at any of our other races all year. We know now what the problem was and fixed it and won’t have it again. We dropped the transmission, put in a new clutch and reinstalled the transmission. That process took about an hour and cost us almost 45 laps. That was the significant event in the race that put us behind the eight-ball.
It was a huge accomplishment for our team to make it through the entire race without a blemish on the car. We didn’t have to replace or repair a single body panel. With 67 cars out there, running on a 3.5-mile track for 24 hours, not having any contact with another car or wall and keeping the car clean for the whole 24 hours is pretty remarkable. We ended up 19th in the GT Daytona class and completed a total of 615 laps.
Looking ahead
Next for us is Sebring, which is a track that should suit our car extremely well. The Balance of Performance (BoP) received by the governing body, IMSA, put us in a position where our car received a restriction, which made our car struggle at Daytona. IMSA balances all of the cars by the amount of power you are allowed to have and that’s determined by how much air comes into the engine. That’s what they restrict. It would not be a problem if we could use all the power the V-10 has to give. They only let us breathe through a small straw; we are limited in the amount of power we can use and it’s a big car to push through the air as you are going around the banking at Daytona.
We have 10 more races, and our goal is to win the championship for the ViperExchange.com team. After our Daytona finish, that’s going to be a tall order. We need to finish in the top-five for the rest of the season and have a little luck on our side as well. It’s a big challenge, but I’m extremely excited about the season and I think we are capable. Our car, drivers and team are spectacular. I am very proud to be a part of it.