GT90s Race at Dijon

Last week end at Dijon’s ancient F1 track held the first GT90s Revival race from the season, which I entered with the Viper “C27”.

Historically “C27” is an extremely important Viper GTS/R as it was the number 92 car raced at Daytona 2000 one of the three cars entered by the factory. They scored a stunning overall victory, actually finishing 1st (C21), 3rd (C22) and 5th ( C27 ). One of the very rare time the Motorsport history when GTs cars beaten Prototypes during a major 24 Hours endurance race.

“C27” has a great post factory history as it was sold in 2001 to a racing shock absorbers company to be used as a development and test car. Very little use was done to it and it was actually not used after 2001, preserving her to be molested by further private race teams like it happened to most of the factory cars. When I bought it, it was still extremely original though requiring a cosmetic restoration and major service.

The work was carried out in 2008 and I decided to bring it back to tracks during this historic event, considering C27 much as a historic race car, then the GT90s Revival Series race was a great opportunity for the glorious car’s come back.

When it arrived at the track C27 still required some minor setting on aero, suspension, brake balance and engine management. We actually used the free practices and qualification as a “scale 1“ testing session. However we managed to qualify 3rd for the Sunday race which was not too bad.

On the starting grid the rain appeared and all the cars were fitted with dries, during the race the rain became more an more important. At the end it was literally raining dogs and cats. Thanks to a good pace and strategy during the tyres/drivers change, we finally managed to win the race by one lap !!!

We were extremely happy to havewon there, as last year in GT90s we really had back luck despite leading many races. For instance at Le Castellet on wet track the engine problem we suffered with the car I shared with period driver Marc Duez certainly costed us the win.

I’m also very proud to have scored the very first Victory during a historic event with an authentic and original specification factory Viper GTS/R. In the next years no doubt Vipers will have a great success as historic / classic cars and enter in a new world …

I warmly encourage the old GT1/2/3 owners to motivate and join us in October for the GT90s Race at Magny Cours, they are great events, perfectly organised and potentially the only series to see such famous cars.