Riley Motorsports No. 33 ViperExchange.com/ Gas Monkey Garage Dodge Viper GT3-R Rolls Off From Inside of Row Four in Tight GTD FieldBen Keating will start seventh in the Riley Motorsports No. 33 ViperExchange.com/ Gas Monkey Garage Dodge Viper GT3-R in Sunday’s Michelin GT Challenge IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race at Virginia International Raceway (VIR).The first round of a three-race stretch-run to close out the 2016 season, the Michelin GT Challenge at VIR can be seen live on FOX Sports 1 (@FS1) at 1:30 p.m. EDT tomorrow, Sunday, August 28. Keating turned a top lap time of 1:45.680 (111.4 mph) in his final flying lap of the 15-minute GT Daytona (GTD) and clocked in less than three-quarters-of-a-second behind the class pole winner in a tight field. He will start tomorrow’s two-hour and 40-minute race before handing off to co-driver Jeroen Bleekemolen, the No. 33 team’s usual closer. “Obviously I want to be higher up than P7 in qualifying,” Keating said. “I love this track and I love the new pavement. Something about our suspension with these Continental tires and this new pavement is really good, but we haven’t been up front. We haven’t been a top-five car today in either session, and qualifying seventh I was a little bit disappointed, but when I came back and looked at the times, the fact is that I ran the same lap time this afternoon as I did this morning. Relative to the field, I think I was better.”A new racing surface on the 3.27-mile VIR road course has improved lap times while also giving teams and drivers a new challenge figuring out the nuances of the recently paved track.“The track is coming in,” Bleekemolen said. “You get more and more grip pretty much every lap. I feel every time we go out there’s more grip on the track, and I really enjoyed it in the last free practice this morning in the end because the grip is actually pretty amazing.”While the grip is coming in, it is largely confined to the main racing groove around the VIR track. Straying even slightly into the still green sections off the racing line has been one of the trickier aspects for teams and drivers this weekend.

“I think almost everybody pushed somewhere or went off somewhere in that qualifying session, including myself,” Keating said. “That’s going to be a big part of the race tomorrow. The new pavement is really grippy until it’s not. Everybody fell victim to it at some point or another.”Literally staying on the straight and narrow could mean the difference between making it to victory lane or ending up in the grass in tomorrow’s race.“If you go offline there is not so much grip there yet,” Bleekemolen said. “I think that will improve as well but it will stay tricky for the race, so staying on track will be a big thing in the race for everyone. You see a lot of cars, whether it’s GTD or GTLM, going off, so this will be key, but I really enjoy the amount of grip you get.”The ViperExchange.com team hasn’t ruled out trying some changes on the No. 33 Viper in Sunday’s final 20-minute warm-up, the last on-track session before that afternoon’s race. “I think we’re going to try a little something else,” Keating said. "I pushed off, so we’re going to try to give ourselves a little more front-end grip and see how we like it in the morning.”As the first of this season’s final three races, a good result in the Michelin GT Challenge will keep Keating, Bleekemolen and No. 33 team in the hunt for the IMSA WeatherTech GTD championships.The No. 33 team and drivers have 222 points, 10 points ahead of the fourth-place team and drivers and just six points behind the second-place No. 44 Audi team. The first-place No. 63 Ferrari team has 243 points. Race-day Sunday starts with a 20-minute warmup at 8:05 a.m. EDT, and the featured Michelin GT Challenge is scheduled to start at 1:35 p.m. EDT for a two-hour and 40-minute race on the 3.27-mile VIR road course.