Ben Keating: "I expected to come as a spectator"

Ben Keating is one of the sensations of this Lone Star Le Mans 2024. The 53-year-old driver makes his return to the World Championship this weekend.Endurance of the FIA. At home, moreover, since Keating was born in Tomball (Texas), a little over 2 hours drive from the Circuit of the Americas in Austin. The local of the stage had therefore planned to be there, even without a steering wheel in his hands.

« I am delighted to be here, rejoiced Ben Keating at a press conference in Austin. I was expecting to come as a spectator to harass all my friends from the Endurance World Championship! I was delighted that it fell on a weekend when I had nothing else to do. So I had planned to be there anyway. And Christian Ried, who I have raced against for the last four years, is also a good friend. He called me and asked if I wanted to race, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity."

Ben Keating had the opportunity to drive the #3 Ford Mustang GT88 he shares with Mikkel Pedersen and Dennis Olsen at the end of Free Practice 1 on Friday.

“It’s fun to come back to this particular track. I haven’t raced here since 2019, but I’ve had a lot of success here. I think the Mustang had a pretty tough development year, but the first year of a brand new car, so my expectations are very reasonable. I only had about 1 minutes in the car at the end of the last session (Free Practice XNUMX), and I was pleasantly surprised. I still have a lot to learn.” »

This return to WEC is also an opportunity for the Texan to discover a new category of car, he who was crowned champion of the last two seasons of GTE Am with Aston Martin then Corvette.

« It takes so long to master that I don't know if you can really master ABS braking., Keating explains. I feel like I'm less consistent because I never really know what the computer is going to do. I feel like I'm a little more numb going into a corner than I would be if I had direct feedback from a system without ABS. The main difference between GTE and GT3 is that in all the GTE cars, we had proprietary Michelin tires that were designed specifically for that car. And you can work with the tire manufacturer to design a tire that would mask the problems you have with a particular car. If you have a problem with a particular car, you can design a tire to match that problem. In this case, everyone is using the same tire, which makes it harder for all the manufacturers to make sure their car works well with that particular tire. »

Lone Star Le Mans Free Practice 2 is scheduled for this Friday at 17:10 p.m. (local time), 00:10 a.m. in France.

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