Sports car racing is home turf for those who prefer a sport more vigorous than golf, and gentlemen racers have been around longer than one may think. It began when British aristocrats started showing up at race tracks during the 1930s.
These Brits paved the way for drivers such as Americans Briggs Cunningham and Bob Akin, to name a couple. Netflix has released a movie, “The Gentleman Driver,” which chronicles modern uber-rich drivers such as Ed Brown, Ricardo Gonzalez, Michael Guasch and Paul Dalla Lana.
Texan Ben Keating is a proud, card-carrying gentleman racer.
He has won the Rolex 24 At Daytona, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring three times and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In November, he became the World Endurance Championship GTE-Am champion.
It all started when Keating’s wife bought him a track session as a Christmas gift. The then-35-year-old car dealer had never turned a lap on a race track. Mind you, Keating was a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealer, so he grabbed a Dodge Viper off the showroom floor, borrowed a helmet and rolled onto the track. He quickly cooked the brake fluid, leading to the terror of an “OMG-no-brakes” moment.
Other racers swarmed over the newbie’s car and bled the brakes. Keating rapidly realized racing can be addictive, if a little complicated.
Thus, two new four-letter words were entered in Keating’s vocabulary: fast and race.
As Roger Penske once said: “You don’t show up at Augusta (Masters golf tournament) and never hit a ball.”
Keating knew he had to practice, so he headed off to a Viper Days amateur event at Texas World Speedway. That was the first step in “a journey of a thousand miles” and then some.
In his next step, Keating made a beeline to Duluth, Minn., transplant Bobby Archer’s hauler. He wanted Archer to turn his street Viper into a track-day race car. Archer didn’t think it was a wise move.
“He actually came to me with a brand-new car and a briefcase full of cash,” Archer recalled. “He said, ‘I want to make this into a race car,’ and I said, ‘No you don’t.’ I was in the middle of mounting some tires, so he came back and said: ‘You’re the guy. You can build me the car.’” Again, Archer demurred: “You need to buy an existing car and you’ll end up with two cars for the same money. I had a car right there that belonged to a guy. He came back and said people told him that car can’t win. The guy that owned it was a gentleman driver and I said all it needed was a set of tires and it can win.”
There was more wrangling than a Texas rodeo. It ended when Archer made a handshake deal. He qualified the questionable Viper on the pole and claimed he would lap the entire field if Keating would agree to buy the car.
Archer delivered and Keating bought the car.
Keating later admitted that transforming his street car was ill-advised. Archer agreed to repaint the Viper pink. Keating’s dealerships had a pink motif, but it was a pale “Flamingo” pink. Perhaps Keating believed real men can wear pink.
Archer was impressed by Keating’s business sense and the success he has enjoyed in the car business. Archer noted that Keating used “mental math,” sizing up a deal very quickly.
“I was a Viper racer before I was a Viper retailer,” Keating said. “And by the time Viper went away as a brand I was far and away the No. 1 Viper retailer in the world.”
That gave him a lot of “street cred.”
Other Viper racers knew Keating wasn’t blowing smoke when they asked him for advice on brake fluids, tires or shock absorbers simply because he raced the same car.
“They want to have that conversation with me,” Keating said. “It’s a different type of communication and relationship. Building that relationship over time, it definitely turns into the opportunity to sell them vehicles. There’s definitely a truth to ‘Win on Sunday. Sell on Monday.’”
When Keating was getting his “speed fix” at the track, he soon realized building and running his own race team could divert focus away from managing a growing dealer enterprise.
Archer added his two cents on Keating’s rationale. “I have the greatest respect for his business savvy and it allows him to race whatever he wants,” Archer said. “He has put himself in places where he can be competitive. He’s approaching it (racing) like a business.”
That said, Keating joined the ranks of gentlemen racers. Top-tier sports car teams hoover up the factory and big sponsorship deals leaving table scraps for second- and third-tier teams. Keating is a godsend for them. The payoff for Keating is palpable.
“One of the things I love about endurance sports car racing is I’m on the same track, the same day with these guys who are professionals and they are much better than me,” Keating said. “That is fun and exciting that I get to go out in this incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery and explore the limits of what I am able to do personally with whatever talent and skill I have.”
PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports owner Bobby Oergel says Keating made a big difference en route to victory at Sebring. Keating offered to drive as many as four stints if needed. The team took him up on the offer.
“After the first double stint we got on the radio with him and it sounds like he had just woken up from a nap, cool as a cucumber,” Oergel said. “We asked him if he could go for one more stint and his answer was, ‘Absolutely.’ At the end of the triple (stint) we got on the radio and asked if he could go one more stint. The answer again was, ‘Absolutely.’”
Keating’s amazing grit led to a team victory.
“This is the only sport I am aware of for a 51-year-old guy that owns some car dealerships in Texas, and I get to race in the big show with the big names on the track at the same time as the best in the business in the 24 Hours of Le Mans or the 24 Hours of Daytona,” Keating noted. “I get to play football in the Super Bowl and catch the game-winning pass from Tom Brady.”
And there’s more, some special recognition.
“In addition to winning the World Endurance Championship (in GTE-Am), they (the FIA) also awarded me Gentleman of the Year,” Keating said.
Keating’s plans for this year have set the beehive buzzing. He will campaign the first privateer Corvette C8R for the season.
The hits just keep coming for this gentleman driver living the dream.
This story appeared in the Jan. 18 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
