The Viper isn't much of a
The Viper isn't much of a story here - the Corvette is. A quick comparison:
Viper GTS-R "unveiling" - April 4, 2012
Viper GTS-R racing debut - August 4, 2012 (Mid-Ohio, ALMS)
Length of race: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Days between unveiling and racing debut - 122
Days between unveiling and 2014 Rolex 24 - 662
Highest position finished in debut - #10 of 13 cars
Manufacturer quote: "SRT Motorsports’ Team Viper was candid about its mission in Saturday’s American Le Mans Series event at Mid-Ohio. The mission – have both SRT Viper GTS-R race cars running at the finish of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge in the GT class."
Corvette C7.R "unveiling" - January 13, 2014
Corvette C7.R racing debut - January 25, 2014 (Rolex 24, Daytona)
Length of race: 24 hours
Days between unveiling and racing debut - 12
Days between unveiling and 2014 Rolex 24 - 12
Highest position finished in debut - #5 of 11 cars in class
Manufacturer quote: N/A
There really is no comparison: Viper took almost two years to get to that 3rd place finish in its class while the Corvette took less than two weeks to get 5th.
This is reminiscent of the pathetic Laguna Seca showing where the brand-new Viper GTS couldn't even best the outgoing Corvette ZR1. So with SRT CEO Ralph Gilles tweeting that professional race car driver Randy Probst "has always struggled with the Viper", back to the drawing board SRT goes in order to develop the Viper TA, . How many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars were thrown at this already-brand-new car to get it competitive with the discontinued Corvette? Who knows? But when Motor Trend tested this new Viper variation with the goofy name they found that it was indeed faster than the four-year-old Corvette - by a scant 0.08 seconds. Yep, all that hype for less than 1/10th of one single second around Laguna Seca. Wow.
Make no mistake, it is great to see two American-made sports cars duke it out (although Chrysler is now owned 100% by Italy-based Fiat), but the big news is a car that made its racing debut in a grueling 24-hour race just 12 days after it was unveiled. Not some car that spent well over a year tuning up on tracks around the world before it finally ran this race.