Dodge broke Laguna Seca, other track records

The original Dodge Viper went on the road and bested cars costing multiple times the price. After a brief period of being slammed as not living up to its price, the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR has done it again — breaking lap records at 13, including the world-famous Laguna Seca, Road Atlanta, and Virginia International Raceway.

The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) has certified that the 2016 Dodge Viper ACR now holds more track records than any other production car in the world.

Credit goes to the Viper ACR’s optional Extreme Aero package, which delivers 1,700+ pounds of peak downforce at top speed.

Dodge’s SRT vehicle dynamics and development engineer Chris “The Wolf” Winkler, an SCCA champion with over two decades of experience, set eleven of the Viper ACR’s thirteen track records.

At the Laguna Seca Raceway, Dodge used Randy Pobst, who already had dozens of track records there. His new time was 5.27 seconds faster than the past ACR’s track record at Laguna, and 1.24 seconds faster than his previous Laguna track record in the 887-horsepower, $845,000 Porsche 918 Spyder — the equivalent of 11 car lengths after just one lap.

The Viper ACR is a street legal car. Copying the success of the old Ramchargers and Golden Commandos, many SRT engineers also race their own cars; they also learned from the factory-based racing Viper GTS-R that won the GTLM class driver and team championships in 2014 in ALMS.

As with the Hellcat series, the Viper was designed to run at the track for long periods without a performance falloff. Full information/more photos

Read more at: http://www.allpar.com/news/index.php/2015/11/dodge-broke-laguna-seca-other-track-records-30504