The first time that the 2013 SRT Viper GTS-R participated in the American Le Mans Series’ GT class was quite admirable. These two cars didn’t just complete the race at Mid-Ohio. The #91 car, which was driven by Kuno Wittmer and Dominik Farnbacher, placed No. 10 in its class. Gary Johnson, Chrysler SRT’s road racing manager, believes that having the Viper GTS-R cars finish is already an achievement. At Chrysler’s media blog, Johnson said that it had accomplished its first goal to finish the race without any major problems. He added that the cars improved and made significant progress throughout the race. He said that the race enabled them to find out the issues and where to focus. It can’t be denied that both Vipers finished behind many of their GT-class rivals like the Pratt & Miller Chevrolet Corvette C6Rs by two seconds.
But what makes this impressive is that it’s the first outing for the SRT’s race program that was basically built in shorter than six months. It’s also notable that the #91 car experienced some teething issues in practice sessions earlier in the week.
Torque News said that the #91 Viper had an engine sputter at the first practice round on Saturday, prompting it to leave both the second practice round and the qualifying session. Because of this, Wittmer and Farnbacher had to begin at the back of the 32-car field, a six-spot decline from the second-to-last GT class entrant. Marc Goosens and Tommy Kendall had driven the #93 Viper to earn a 10th-in-class starting position with a lap time of 1:22:158.
