On a pristine August day at the Road America track in rural Wisconsin, the paddock is a hive of activity, buzzing to the soundtrack of a varied set of engine pitches. Some rumble like Johnny Cash, some screech like Axl Rose, all of them rev up occasionally to alert meandering fans that they need to clear a path for a car on its way to the track entrance. Moving against traffic is a red mini-bike that looks comically small under the big man driving it. Veteran sports car driver Tommy Kendall was in a massive accident more than 20 years ago, leaving him with a pronounced limp, which is why he’s using gas-powered means to return to team headquarters after a practice session, even as two of his younger Street and Racing Technology teammates, Kuno Wittmer and Dominik Farnbacher, bound back to the trailer at about the same speed on foot.
In less than 48 hours, the 46-year-old Kendall will be racing in a Dodge Viper that, like him, is making a bit of a comeback in the American Le Mans Series. Kendall hasn’t raced competitively for six years and the Viper has been absent from the track for over a decade. When Chrysler decided to reissue its signature performance vehicle in 2013 following a three-year hiatus, it made sense to get back into sports car racing. For three consecutive years from 1998 to 2000, Vipers finished 1-2 in their class at the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans event in France. SRT knows it will be a tough journey trying to get either of its two cars running at the front of the pack. But Kendall, his teammates and the crew, who endlessly agonize over every aspect of the car, are more than willing to push the limits as they attempt to recapture past glory.
You don’t have to be around Wittmer and Farnbacher long to learn they’re never more than a wrench turn apart, and not just because of their obvious affinity for one another. Communication is crucial in the Le Mans Series because the format is endurance racing, meaning each driver must be at the helm for a certain percentage of the race, which can range from two hours right up to the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans. (24 Hours of Le Mans is an invite-only event, but a good showing on the ALMS can help a team’s chances of gaining entry.) Unlike other forms of racing, where teams run two cars and employ a couple of drivers who often want very little to do with each other, endurance racers must merge their styles to suit a car that can only be set up one way. As such, Wittmer and Farnbacher spend hours looking at computer data that overlays their lap paths, identifying who did what where to go faster. Their constant conversation, Wittmer says, lasts, “from the moment we see each other in the lobby in the morning until we go to bed.”
All communication lines, of course, run through the engineers and mechanics. That’s why, when the drivers arrive in the morning, the first order of business is to shake the hands and slap the backs of the men and women who operate on little sleep and less food during race weekends, so there’s no mistaking the fact they appreciate everything that’s done under the hood. For a race team getting its program off the ground, it’s an endless game of trial and error. Figuring out what makes the car respond is not unlike those first nights out with a new flame. “You don’t want to say the wrong thing,” Wittmer says with a grin.
You get the sense, in any context, Wittmer and Farnbacher have no trouble establishing themselves as guys you want to be around. The 30-year-old Wittmer is a disciplined athlete who’s already knocked off several half-marathons this year and is looking to graduate to triathlons, his new wife cheering him on from the beach when they’re in Florida, and back home in Montreal, where he jogs around the often-empty Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. He comes from a family of racers and has seen the recent documentary chronicling the life and death of famous Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna three times. His defined facial features and neatly kept hair give him the look of a person who’s rarely caught off guard. When SRT sent Wittmer to drive for the first time at Germany’s famous Nürburgring, he used virtual means to learn the track’s contours, driving it over and over on his Xbox. Farnbacher, 28, also works to make sure he’s equipped to handle whatever comes his way, but he emits that easy, natural air of a guy who is good at whatever he’s doing. The German also has a boyish grin, floppy curls and an endearing enthusiasm accentuated by the fact he clearly loves that his purpose in life is to go really, really fast. On the morning of race day, he pops out the steering wheel in the No. 91 car to provide a quick tutorial. There are buttons to change gears and limit speed in the pits, and one that provides a splash of water for the driver via a tube fastened to the helmet, marked with an icon that mirrors what most race spectators will be consuming. “You didn’t know we got to drink beer, did you?” Farnbacher says.
Even when Farnbacher isn’t in the cockpit, he inherently feels as though he can harness an engine. Between bites of his salmon dinner the night before the race, he chuckles while recalling all the times he’s been slumbering on a plane only to be jolted half-awake by turbulence. Without fail, he starts using his imaginary steering wheel to try and correct the problem. At the same table, Wittmer notes that guiding a race car is far less about using the upper body than people realize. A driver’s feet and legs let him know how the car is handling and work in concert with the arms and shoulders to manipulate the machinery around the track.
It was Kendall’s bottom half that bore the brunt of the trauma back in 1991, when his Chevy Intrepid lost a tire coming into turn five at New York’s Watkins Glen International and slammed into a barrier, leaving a then 24-year-old Kendall with two broken ankles and a shattered leg. He healed up and went on to establish himself as a road course legend, dominating the Trans Am Series in the 1990s before putting his knowledge and charisma to use in the broadcast booth. Despite a prolonged stretch on the sideline and not being in peak physical form, Kendall, according to driving partner Marc Goossens, “hasn’t lost any speed.”
In the time between morning practice and afternoon qualifying, Kendall, with grey-speckled scruff and a buzzed head to finish the job genetics started, sits on the red mini-bike, his back to the handle bars, sheltered from the sun by an awning that springs from the SRT trailer. He engages a crowd of about a half-dozen admirers, some wearing shirts, all wearing smiles. The scene symbolizes why, if one of the shirtless fans wanted to cover up, he could buy clothing on site that says, “Too dumb for opera, too smart for NASCAR.” Not every driver can be found chewing the fat with fans, but the International Motor Sports Association mandates a one-hour autograph session the morning of race day and there’s an ingrained understanding that everyone who attends is entitled to a more intimate experience than simply watching cars whiz by from the outside of the track.
Aficionados of such brands as Corvette, Ferrari, Porsche and BMW saunter right up to temporary garages, where they can see cars feverishly stripped down and built up again. For the most part, the engines they’re looking at have the same capabilities as the ones that power the mass-produced versions of the cars, some of which dot the various parking lots around Road America in tiny Elkhart Lake.
In the context of this environment, Chrysler is hoping to rally Viper lovers to help continue the company’s rise from near-ruin during the 2008 economic meltdown. Chrysler has focused its racing efforts elsewhere for more than a decade, but declared its intentions to return to the ALMS earlier this year and its SRT squad debuted the Viper at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge in early August, two weeks before the event at Road America.
As with any fledgling outfit, SRT is blending high standards with realistic expectations. In Ohio, Wittmer and Farnbacher finished 10th out of 13 cars in their class, while Kendall and Goossens wound up 12th in the same category. When Wittmer crosses the finish line in Wisconsin ninth in a 13-car field, Farnbacher hops a barrier to traverse pit road—a dangerous activity because cars are buzzing home after four hours on the track—to give his teammate a hearty, satisfied fist-shake as the Viper screams by. The result may not be stirring, but simply completing the course gives the team, which is eyeing a precipitous rise next spring when it will compete full-time, something to work with.
About two hours before Wittmer’s 91 car speeds to the finish, Kendall gives the crew more work than they bargained for. Turn three is a high-speed corner and Road America is an undulating course with sharp elevation changes. After coming off the rumble strip, Kendall loses grip where the track plunges downward. The Viper comes slightly off the ground and doesn’t respond well when it thuds back onto the track, sliding into the wall. The driver’s side of the No. 93 is significantly scuffed up, but Kendall is fine, at least physically. He’s mad at himself for putting the car beyond its still-emerging limits, creating another long night for a crew of bleary-eyed mechanics who, as Kendall laments, “fantasize about sleep.”
As the wounded Viper is slowly lowered off the flatbed of one of the raceway’s extended pickup trucks, Kendall and Goossens are holding a post-mortem, from which Kendall emerges with a skyward glance and a lengthy exhale. He shuffles toward the cover of SRT’s trailers, where he’s stopped by two fans, one young, one old, who present items to be signed. For someone reared on traditional North American team sports, it’s impossible not to imagine how a hockey player or baseball manager still hot from a game ejection would react to this request. Kendall, his fire-retardant suit peeled halfway off, signs his name and limps away.
This article originally appeared in Sportsnet Magazine.