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of PageTESTING THE Le Mans Viper GTS-R
HANG ON FOR 0-60 MPH IN 2.9 SECONDS
BY MAC DEMERE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYN WILLIAMS
Ta
howling, 150-mph, man-made hurricane; he lone windshield wiper
vainly slapped at the rain being flung horizontally by a
staggering 650 full-throttle horsepower used up every ounce of
grip offered by the foot-wide Michelin racing rain tires. A
100-foot-tall rooster tail of spray filled the mirrors and
obliterated rear visibility. Looming ahead at the end of the
straight was the first braking marker for a superfast
right-hander; last time around, the car slid wide after splashing
through the puddle at its apex. This time the upshift alarm, set
for 6000 rpm, glowed yellow. There was only one thing to do: Slap
the shift lever into sixth and go back to wide-open throttle.
Forward vision wasn’t any worse than it was a half-dozen mph
slower -- nor was the tires’ grip, in sixth at 157 mph (the
terminal velocity reached before I wimped out and hit the
binders). If things went wrong, the difference of a handful of
mph wouldn’t usefully reduce the damage the concrete walls
would inflict on the quarter-million-dollar Viper
GTS-R.
The full-race Viper was unfamiliar to me and, after no more than
15 laps, would largely stay that way. The track was foreign
(literally): I wasn’t sure which way all the turns went, and
severe jet-lag wasn’t helping my dexterity. The weather was
what pilots call IFR (instrument flight rules): Water was running
down the inside of the windshield, the defogger wasn’t
defogging, and the single wiper didn’t cover much of the
windshield -- all of which made blind the turn-in point for
left-handers. My drenched driving boots were slipping on the
pedals, and the seat of my overalls was soaked through to my
fire-resistant long johns. Add in neon signs and jukeboxes, make
it rhyme, and we’d have the lyrics for a new hit country
song.
We were on the French Mediterranean coast at Circuit Paul Ricard,
once the home of the French Grand Prix. After an overnight flight
from Los Angeles, I enjoyed a nearly sleepless stay in an elegant
hotel room, which previously served as the stables of a
magnificent 16th century royal chateau. (Ever had a hotel room
with an open, 20-foot-deep well?) My internal clock, which had
roused me at 2 a.m. local time, said it was Sunday night -- not
Monday morning -- and past time for beddy-bye. An aside: My
personal average speed for the action-packed three-day round trip
was 189.6 mph (that’s the speed of plane flight divided by
actual hours on the journey), short of my 238.7-mph personal best
last year for a really brief European Grand Tour.
The race car was a Chrysler Viper GTS-R. (Yes, Chrysler Viper. In
Europe all Chrysler Corp. products, from Caravan to Neon to
Viper, carry one label.) The striped wonder was a veteran of the
’96 24 Heures du Mans and last year’s BPR Global
Endurance GT Series. Constructed in Dodge’s Team Viper shops
in Michigan, it was campaigned by the French Viper Team ORECA.
Unlike NASCAR Winston Cup cars, which employ nothing from their
road-going namesakes, the Viper utilizes a large number of
off-the-shelf parts. This is largely because of the rules for Le
Mans and the new-for-’97 FIA GT Championship, which replaces
the BPR series. The regulations fit well with the GTS’s
race-car-for-the-street nature and Chrysler’s stated desire
to race what it sells.
The stock frame is hidden away in a maze of reinforcing rollcage
tubing. Suspension arms are straight off the street GTS, save for
the addition of hemispherical rod ends. A lightly massaged
version of the stock Borg-Warner T-56 six-speed is bolted to the
bell housing. Similarly, a blueprinted-but-stock Dana 44
differential was fitted.
The engine retains the stock cylinder block, heads, and
crankshaft (the latter turned down to accept the more plentiful
Chrysler Hemi bearings). Carillo Racing connecting rods and J+E
pistons help the ’97 version of the 8.0-liter OHV V-10 spin
to a lofty 7200 rpm, 1000 higher than the rev limit we used in
France. The sound is more multicam than pushrod, much like a
Formula One Cosworth from 30 years ago rather than a current
NASCAR motor. Typical for racers, Team Viper plays coy with
horsepower figures, but we estimate the ’96 version made a
bit more than 650 horses, despite breathing through the required
pair of intake restrictors. Who knows what it would make with an
open intake!
For ’97, a new 10-throttle-butterfly,
single-plenum intake helps boost power beyond, we surmise, 680
horsepower, and torque perhaps tops a titanic 700 pound-feet with
the GT1 restrictors installed. To avoid competing with the
loophole-exploiting Porsche 911 GT1 and million-dollar McLaren F1
GTR, however, most Viper GTS-Rs will run smaller intake
restrictors -- down from 38.2 to 32.4 millimeters -- and enter
the closer-to-stock GT2 class. At low and middle revs the smaller
restrictors don’t significantly hinder power or torque, but
will cut about 1000 rpm and 100 horsepower off the peak, said
Team Viper’s GTS-R Program Manager Neil Hannemann, a
champion driver in his own right (with whom yours truly co-drove
a pair of 24-hour race wins).
The result is beyond-outrageous performance. Try 0-60 mph in 2.9
seconds and 0-100 mph in just 5.4 seconds with a
10.3-second/143.9-mph quarter mile. (The rain prevented testing
in France, so these incredible numbers were obtained by Team
Viper from a Pi Research onboard data-acquisition system affixed
to a beyond-680-horsepower ’97 GT1-spec GTS-R driven by
racer Tommy Archer.)
Race cars vary in friendliness: The GTS-R proved to be a bon ami.
Controls are familiar and felt much like the street Viper GTS
I’d driven from the chateau to the track. Although stiffly
sprung, the GTS-R was fairly emotive -- I easily sensed the onset
of understeer before it became a problem. At higher speeds, the
big rear wing and aggressive front splitter smeared the car to
the road; grip was exceptional for such miserable conditions.
Overall, the GTS-R was, I’m thankful, tolerant of driving
errors -- except, that is, when I was too aggressive with the
throttle leaving tight corners. Then it would wag its tail as if
to say, "Naughty, naughty."
Chrysler hopes to populate Le Mans and the FIA GT Championship
with Viper GTS-Rs and, thus, convince Europeans to think of
Chrysler as a high-tech, leading-edge corporation -- compelling
them to buy loads of Caravans and Neons. To persuade team owners
to campaign its cars, Team Viper offers ready-to-race examples
for the relatively bargain-basement price of $285,000, which is
just $30,000 over last year’s price. Of course, you’ll
need another $2 million -- $4 million would be better -- to
seriously contest both Le Mans and the GT Championship.
For this test -- auto writers from around the
world were standing in line to sample the car, and, yes, one from
another country pranged it -- stopwatches were wisely banished.
Yet, lap times were furtively recorded by the onboard computer
(along with road speed, rpm, throttle, steering position, and,
for all I know, the dirty words the driver says after a mistake).
But the team’s computer guru didn’t volunteer that
information. And my times were so bad, I didn’t press him.
Even shifting gears in a new race car presents challenges. The
regular drivers shift with just the wrist, but our man tends to
use his whole arm inward, which, once, caused a 3-2 shift when a
3-4 was needed. escargot-suffocator. Coincidentally, the
Viper’s oil-pressure alarm falsely (the crew later
determined) broadcast a warning across the digital instrument
screen. I killed the engine and coasted into the pits. It was as
if God tapped me on the shoulder and said, "That’s
enough for today. The car is still in one piece, and one
needn’t be omnipotent to see you aren’t going to go
faster.
"Besides," continued the voice in my head, 'the first
time you wreck one of these, I’m closing down this ‘We
test cool race cars’ business."
Just for a change, I listened.
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