I'm very sorry to share that we've lost another close friend in Denis Bochet who passed away on March 7 at the age of 57. Denis, the brother of our dear friend Stan Bochet, was as kind and jovial as they come. He often had the entire table laughing during meals when we visited France. Denis and Stan had years of motorsports fun together while drag racing as Big Brothers Racing Team with everything from wild bikes to Funny cars. Denis took great pride in giving me a tour of his shop which contained all sorts of treasures including a Soviet rocket! I'm certainly going to miss seeing him in the future and offer my deepest condolences to Stan and the entire Bochet family. 

In lighter news, Competition Coupe C111 has debuted a new livery at the Adelaide Motorsports Festival and included Viper Racing History on the new wrap! The red, white and blue themed look is sharp and we wish Justin and GT Collective good luck and many thanks this weekend! The car is available for purchase so if you're interested please reach out to me at viperracinghistory@gmail.com and I can put you in contact with the owners. 

Grant Reeves has also debuted Competition Coupe C631 after a chassis up restoration at Complete Performance Motorsports in Sebring, Ohio. This unique car is somewhat of a hybrid in terms of its mechanical configuration and now wears Comp Coupe GT-C style bodywork having previously worn Gen V Viper style panels. It's currently sporting a monotone dark blue livery and you should expect to see it at various club racing events this season. 

There hasn't been much in the way of news during the winter months. I've been in the process of moving so the physical archive of Viper Racing History has been packed away for some time. 

One highlight is that ORECA recently unveiled a tribute livery on GTS-R C13. They had reacquired the car a few years ago for display in their new museum and have applied an homage to C21 - the 2000 Rolex 24 at Daytona overall race winner. Those sharp eyed fans will still be able to spot the differences between the two cars, aside from all the dirt and debris that remains on the original of course! 

It's cool to see ORECA founder Hugues de Chaunac next to a Viper again along with other team members, some in their original Viper Team ORECA apparel. 

Photo courtesy of  The Ascott Collection 

GTS-R C39 is available for sale via The Ascott Collection. This car scored numerous wins in the Belcar Championship and made an appearance at the 2002 Le Mans 24 Hours. You can see more about C39's history on the GTS-R registry or contact the seller about its availability here:

https://en.ascottcollection.com/viper-gts-r-c39

Photos by James Retych

Photo courtesy of Angus Fender

C113 is on the move from Great Britain to the Czech Republic! Hope to see it back on track in central Europe. 

Often assumed to have been a Competition Coupe, for obvious reasons, there is more to the 2003 Team Taisan JGTC GT300 class Viper than first meets the eye. I haven’t been working on registry updates for some time, but I was encouraged to look further into this car by good friend Florent Moulin (Art and Revs) who was offered this very car for sale circa 2007-2008. He knew back then something was strange about it and he was correct. 

I was able to obtain correspondence from Team Taisan founder Ricky Chiba stating that in early 2003 he acquired a new GTS-R chassis directly from Mopar in Michigan. Next I spoke with members of the original GTS-R/Comp Coupe engineering staff at Chrysler who recall shipping new VCC bodywork to Chiba-san, but noting that it would not fit a GTS-R chassis without significant modification. As you can see in photos, Team Taisan did modify the body panels including flaring the fenders considerably to support the wider track width. The car wore a unique rear wing which is significantly larger than that of a GT-C Comp Coupe, but of similar chord. Taisan’s original GTS-R C8 appeared at the first round of the 2003 JGTC season, but then it was stripped of many of its racing parts which were mounted onto this new chassis. C8 was then fitted with production GTS parts and registered for road use.    

Chiba-san referred to the new car as GTS-R chassis 55 “the final serial GTS-R”. This is troublesome given Chrysler/ORECA produced GTS-Rs into early 2005 with the final chassis being number 52. Multiple attempts to reach people in Japan with FIRST HAND knowledge on the construction of this car have thus far been unsuccessful. Based on the timeline of its construction I believe this could in fact have been chassis 47 and perhaps Taisan declared it C55 to match their car’s race number. Florent’s research into ORECA records notes that C47 had been delivered by Roush to Daimler-Chrysler in 2003, but previously we found nothing from either entity confirming that this had ever been built into a complete car.

The car was not included in the 2018 Team Taisan auction and hasn’t been seen since 2009. Do you know where it is today?  

I will update the registry for this chassis and time permits and research continues. There are some unique technical details to cover and it did have some success in 2003 and even competed in America in 2004. 

-Shawn 

Competition Coupe GT3 C111 live at auction in Australia! Head over to the popular Aussie motorsports marketplace "my105" to bid on a VCC that has just received a mechanical overhaul. Chassis 111 originally landed in England with ABG Motorsport who had two cars set to compete in the British GT Championship, but instead the car would spend the bulk of its racing life in Australia where it remains today. Updates from its original GT3 specification include a MoTeC M800 ECU, a Hollinger sequential gearbox and a Drexler limited slip differential. The car has been fitted with a custom exhaust package and currently the ABS system has been removed. 

Congratulations to our friend Lee Saunders on winning the 2023 Trans Am SGT Championship! Lee has had a dominant season with his KSR race prepared Gen IV Vipers running out of Florida. You can catch some behind the scenes from their season on the KSR Youtube channel here: https://youtu.be/tp849Y1m57o?si=rpN7u8emgSuytstL

Lee has a couple Comp Coupes in his stable as well which are documented on the VCC page. 

That sky summed up the conditions for competiton Sat/Sun. 

Over the last year there have unfortunately been numerous instances where people have pulled original writing and research from this site and reposted it elsewhere without permission, at times for monetary gain. For the time being some of the content is therefore being moved behind a registration wall and reduced in detail. It will still be available for free, but you must first create a simple login using the registration button at the top of the page. Thank you!

I visited Watkins Glen during the Trans Am/SVRA Vintage Grand Prix and saw Lee Saunders sweep the weekend taking the pole and the win in Trans Am's SGT class in his converted ACR street car. The win kept Lee out in front of the championship standings with a few events remaining including VIR, Gateway and COTA. Lee is the first to note that the series is hurting for cars on a consistent basis and it's really difficult for me to understand why. Still, it's wild to see what is clearly a former street car with an H-pattern gearbox out there passing dedicated race cars that are in higher classes and comfortably winning SGT. Good luck to Lee on capturing another Trans Am Championship!

I was on the road last week and didn't get a chance to wish congratulations to Kuno Wittmer on a fantastic career! One which included success behind the wheel of four out of five factory Viper race platforms - Comp Coupe, ACR-X, GTS-R 2 and GT3-R.

I'm sure many Viper fans remember his 2014 GTLM Driver's Championship with SRT Motorsports which he followed up with a win at the 2015 Rolex 24 at Daytona in GTD with Riley Motorsports. But how about a look back at the first Viper he drove in competition?

In 2010 Kuno drove Comp Coupe C102 to a weekend sweep at the World Challenge GT event at Long Beach. Not only did he qualify on pole, but he also set the fastest lap of the race, led every lap and took the win for Dodge/Woodhouse Motorsports. It was his first win in the GT class.

Kuno was kind enough to grant me an interview a couple years ago for the future book and I look forward to sharing some of his thoughts there. Congratulations Kuno!

Last weekend I was fortunate to interview Peter De Vries who acted as Team Manager for Team Trimite Brookspeed during their 2008 British GT Championship winning season! It was a great conversation hearing how Peter, just aged 12 at the time, visited ORECA with his father as the team purchased GTS-R C31, the 2000 Le Mans GTS class winner. He was old enough to take delivery of VCC C106 by the time the team was racing in British GT in 2007/2008 and with drivers Jon Barnes and James Gornall they won the 2008 GT3 championship. I hope to share some of his memories in the future book projects. Jump over to the Comp Coupe page to see more about their winning chassis C106.

While you're there take a look at chassis 40 which I updated while reseraching another car. This Comp Coupe was used by Japan's Team Taisan for drifiting demonstrations. I haven't seen it since selling at auction in 2018. Do you know where it went?

Special thanks to Bruce Hadfield for connecting with me with Bruce Delfino, owner of a very unique ACR-X! If you click on the ACR-X tab and scroll down to chassis 029 you'll see the only X which was delivered wearing the official show car livery, but with dual driver's stripes. 

Photo scanned by Viper Racing history from original by Jeff Reece

François Castaing (1945 - 2023)

Sad news this morning as François Castaing has passed away at the age of 78. Shown here speaking with ORECA's Hugues de Chaunac at Le Mans in 1997, Mr. Castaing was one of the founding fathers of the Viper production car in 1989. As Chrysler's Vice President of Engineering he was a key proponent of the creation of the GTS-R program and was thrilled to receive an award from the ACO for the "audacity" of the program at Le Mans in 1996. His career, which included time as technical director of Renault's Formula 1 team, was so accomplished that in 2010 François was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

May he rest in peace.

This past weekend was the Goodwood Festival of Speed and our friend Florent Moulin was in attendance to run up the hill in GTS-R C51. The weather wasn't cooperative for the attendees dropping rain on course on Friday and forcing event organizers to cancel Saturday's festivities all together due to high winds. As a casual onlooker the lack of practice appeared to impact a number of participants. Even though many use the run up the hill purely for demonstration rather than competition, there seemed to be a significant increase in the number of cars that went of track and sustained damage. 

Fortunately that group did not include the Viper as Florent blasted up the tarmac to score a sixth place finish overall! He pointed out that the car should be able to climb the hill quite a bit quicker if the practice runs hadn't been eliminated. He and the Iconic Racing crew had changed the setup dramatically from that which was run just two weeks prior when we watched the car at Le Mans Classic. We're all left wondering what at its true potential in such a discipline. Still, the former Alain Prost piloted car produced a glorious soundtrack during its run. Take a listen to the video. 

Video by Iconic Racing

If you're looking for a great deal on a factory Viper race car jump over to the For Sale tab and check out ACR-X 024! I competed against this car at Indy last year in Viper Racing League and know first hand it's quick and very well maintained. It has a recently rebuilt engine producing in excess of 700 horsepower and is supported by some nice upgrades to the suspension. For $84,500 I'm not sure how you could do much better!

Score another Trans Am SGT win for Lee Saunders! It was a sparse field for the Memorial Day classic at Lime Rock park, but you can only race who shows up. Lee managed to bring home another class win in his converted production Gen IV. 

Meanwhile out at Road America, Jerry Robinson and Bobby Archer were collection class wins with ACR-X 008 in SVRA competition. It's been a succesfull season for the duo thus far regularly standing atop the Group 12 podium. 

Championship page added to the website! 

Navigate to the Champions page to see a database of national and international championships won by factory Viper racing chassis competing against other marques worldwide. I believe this is the first time such a list has been gathered and associated with each winning chassis. A future addition may include a list of major endurance race victories though these are captured on individual chassis histories.