Keating ‘Ready’ For GTE Am Title Defence With Corvette

Defending Am class champion and Le Mans winner Ben Keating has a big season ahead of him in the FIA WEC. The Texan is part of Corvette Racing’s first foray into the GTE Am category, and has so much to learn about the team, his teammates and the C8.R he will be campaigning.

Prior to this weekend’s Prologue test Keating and his co-driver Nico Varrone had only had two opportunities to test the C8.R. The first was a brief run the Bahrain Rookie Test and an the second was a more substantial putting at a private Sebring test. For Keating, who has driven a multitude of GTE cars over the years, it still took some time to feel comfortable behind the wheel. All the running he can get before next weekend’s 1000-mile race will be invaluable.

“I got to do 10 laps exactly at Bahrain,” he admitted. “We were more focused on testing Silvers and watching Nico go fast. When I first got in the car, I know looking at it that it’s a mid-engined car, so I kept trying (think about) how I’m supposed to drive this car.

“Am I supposed to drive it like a Ford or like the Porsche or like the Ferrari, those being other mid-engine cars? I will say that I was quite disappointed with my performance in Bahrain. I came back and looked at the data and realized that you drive this car completely differently than any of those.

“So while I was leaning on my experience of how to go fast in all those other cars, I wasn’t able to find it. Then fast-forward another couple of months and we went testing at Sebring. It was incredible. The speed came pretty quick for me, I would say. I felt very comfortable in the car, and I feel like I made some huge steps in learning how this car likes to be driven. It’s significantly different than all the others. It’s taken a little bit to get used to.

“After Bahrain I was worried, but after Sebring I’m excited! I made the transition and was really happy with my performance after the test. I’m ready.”

For someone like Keating with so much experience and success as a Bronze driver, joining Corvette seems like a obvious fit for both parties, with the Pratt Miller-run team forced to move to GTE Am following the Pro class’ final season.

But, leaving a team like TF Sport, which Keating won races and a title with, was not an easy decision, especially as he will have to beat them this year if he is to defend his crown in what is Corvette Racing’s 25th anniversary season.

“That team is special,” he said when asked about the decision to switch to Corvette. “They are great people. That’s hard to walk away from. It’s hard to walk away from that much success… second place at Le Mans and second place in the championship (in 2021) and then a win at Le Mans and winning the championship in the second year.

I’ve got nothing bad to say about TF Sport other than they are not racing a Corvette!

“Clearly we were on a roll. But I pay for all this by selling cars, and I don’t sell Aston Martins. I’ve got nothing bad to say about TF Sport other than they are not racing a Corvette!”

In addition to getting used to the C8.R, Keating, and everyone else in the FIA WEC Am class, is going to have to adapt to the change in rules about tyre warmers. This year tyre warmers are banned, meaning drivers will be tasked with heating up stone cold tyres each time they leave the pit lane. For the Bronze drivers in particular, Keating says, this could prove to be a real challenge.

Thankfully he has plenty of experience in IMSA, where having to race without tyre warmers is the norm. It may prove to be an advantage…

“I think everybody is going to be learning a lot,” he explains. “It’s going to be one of the major challenges for all teams in WEC. I feel like the confidential tyre we are running is designed to be heated, and it’s designed to be warm when you take off.

“I think about at Le Mans in the night when it’s cool outside and you have a safety car period or a long full-course yellow, it’s really, really difficult to get those tyres back up to temperature and back up to where they’re hot enough that they are in the right operating window. Sometimes I wasn’t able to get them there, especially at Le Mans where you have the long straightaways.

“I think it’s an advantage for me. I enjoy watching all the European teams, especially in LMP2, come in for the 24 Hours of Daytona. They’re all used to having tyre warmers and they go out and spin in Turn Three very often because they’re not used to what it takes to deal with them.

“It’s easier on the GT cars than the prototypes, but I think we’re going to see quite a few more issues and incidents with all the classes as everyone gets used to what it’s like to go out and deal with cold tyres. It’s a significant change.

“We may also see more teams running a softer compound, seeing if they can get away with doing a double-stint on a softer compound just because that may be the only tyre they can figure out how to get heat in over a stint. It’s going to be an interesting change for this season.”

This change comes right at the end of GTE Am’s life as a class in the WEC. Keating, like many others, says he will be sad to see the GTE platform go at the end of the season. It’s one of the reasons he was so keen to return and defend his crown in 2023, to get one last campaign in before the GT3 platform takes over in 2024.

What really got to me about racing in GT3 is that there were all these BoP changes all the time. You never knew if you were going to have a chance or not to do well in the race.

“What I love about the GTE Am class and racing the GTE car is that it doesn’t have ABS. It really separates the Bronze drivers between those who can drive well without ABS and those who can’t or struggle with it,” he says. “The difference in laptime gets to be larger based on the skill that you acquire over time.

“What really got to me about racing in GT3 is that there were all these BoP changes all the time. You never knew if you were going to have a chance or not to do well in the race. I didn’t like spending dollars, and blood, sweat and tears at a track not knowing if we weren’t going to have a chance.

“What I really love about the GTE Am setup has been that all of the BoP is set off the Pro class from the previous year. We’re racing a previous year’s car so we rarely get BoP changes in GTE Am, and they allow the success ballast to level the playing field. Clearly if you get 40 kilos in the car, it’s going to cost you a half-second a lap at most of the tracks we go to, but you can still have a chance and you can have a competitive car.”