At 1 p.m. Monday, we were on the phone with racer Kuno Wittmer, who on Saturday drove a Dodge SRT Viper GTS-R to the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship GT Le Mans season driver’s title and team title, to talk about his bright future in 2015 with SRT.
At 1:30 p.m. that same day, Kuno Wittmer was out of work.
That’s when he got the call with news the rest of us would quickly become aware of when the press release hit the wires 15 minutes later: Dodge was pulling the plug on its sports car racing program for 2015 and beyond.
“Our company has made a business decision to discontinue the SRT Motorsports Dodge Viper GTS-R racing program,” said Ralph Gilles, Chrysler’s senior vice president of product design. “We are very proud of the amazing achievements our fantastic teams, drivers and partners have achieved on track the last few seasons.”
In August of 2012, on a conference call with reporters, Gilles expressed similar sentiments when he announced that Dodge would not return to NASCAR the following season. Team Penske, then the lone full-time Dodge campaigners, had just won the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship with driver Brad Keselowski. Twice now Dodge has won a championship, but given up on defending it.
So the Dodge Viper SRT GTS-R 2014 racing season—and immediate future—concluded Saturday with the two-car SRT Motorsports team winning the team and driver titles. “SRT Motorsports won two of three championships contested in the class and finished second in the GTLM manufacturer championship in just its second full year of the program,” said Monday’s press release. How all this foreshadows the life span of the production Viper itself is unclear, but it isn’t good. After all, the company recently whacked $15,000 off the car’s price to get sales moving a little, which reportedly, it has.
So where does this leave Chrysler’s Viper racing program? They may continue to support the rejuvenated Trans-Am series, and they may offer some support to Ben Keating, who fielded a privateer Viper in the TUDOR Championship’s GT-Daytona class with considerable success. That might be a smart move: Texan Keating is the world’s largest Viper dealer.
- 2014 SRT (Now Dodge Again!) Viper TA Driven: An Automotive Circus Tiger
- 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Tested: We’ve Reached the Age of Unreason
- Dodge Viper Research: Full Pricing, Specs, Reviews, and More
The only remaining Chrysler racing program locked in for 2015 is NHRA drag racing, but that’s through Mopar, the parts and performance arm of the company. Sunday, Dodge driver Matt Hagan won the Funny Car race at Maple Grove in Pennsylvania, moving him to the points lead.
But does he really want to win the NHRA championship? Given the company’s recent record of winning, then canceling, maybe he should try coming in, say, second place.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1scJuNe
via Agya
