2014 Dodge Viper Goes out on Top with United SportsCar Titles

2014 dodge srt viper yellow

With this year's racing schedule winding down, there's good news and bad for fans of the 2014 Dodge Viper GTS-R.

On the positive side, Kuno Wittmer—along with co-pilots Marc Goossens and Ryan Hunter-Reay—recently drove the No. 91 2014 Dodge Viper GTS-R to a third-place class finish at the Petit LeMans 10-hour endurance race, allowing him to secure the 2014 driver's title for the United SportsCar Championship's GTLM class. Additionally, Wittmer's early-season efforts in the No. 93 2014 Dodge Viper GTS-R, combined with the success of that car's current trio of drivers (Jonathan Bomarito, Dominik Farnbacher and Rob Bell), brought home the GLTM team championship for Dodge/SRT Motorsports.

Said Wittmer after his driver's title win: “The race was really tough. There was a lot of adversity on track, a lot of contact with other cars and people running into each other, but we stayed very clean. We didn’t hit anybody. We had no contact with the car and no damage. It was just about being clean and having perfect pit stops. Engineering did a great job. They didn’t even touch the car during the race. It was just tire pressure – that’s all we adjusted is pressure, which speaks to how good the car was today."

However, that celebration was short-lived, as just a few days later, the Chrysler Group announced it would withdraw Dodge/SRT from the series to allow the now-unified division to "redirect its focus and efforts on the brand's product lineup."

Said Ralph Gilles, formerly head of the SRT brand and now senior vice president of Product Design for the Chrysler Group LLC. “Our company has made a business decision to discontinue the SRT Motorsports Dodge Viper GTS-R racing program.

"We are very proud of the amazing achievements our fantastic teams, drivers and partners have achieved on track the last few seasons. We thank them for their hard work, effort and commitment to SRT Motorsports. It’s been an honor to be a part of the inaugural IMSA TUDOR United SportsCar Championship season and we wish them every success in the future.”

The street car, of course, will stay in production and available at local dealerships, with both the remaining 2014 Dodge Vipers and the soon-to-launch 2015 models benefiting from a $15,000 reduction in starting price, to $84,995.