The only thing that can stop Team Oreca's Vipers...

The only thing that seesm capable of stopping the dominance of the Team Oreca Vipers in endurance sportscar racing will most likely be the rules makers. Olivier Beretta finished second today to teammates Karl Wendlinger and Tommy Archer to take the GTS Championship in the American LeMans series. The Porsche Turbo 911s will need a break in the turbo rules to let them compete against the brilliantly fast and reliable 8.0 liter V10 Vipers.

The Ron Fellows Corvette C5R ran with the Wendlinger Viper in the early laps but was involved in contact with the Roock Racing Champion Porsche 911 EVO that cost it a lap after spinning off. The Corvette was powered by a new 7.0 liter V8 for this race in an effort to match engine displacement with the Vipers.

I agree that the only thing that can stop team Oreca is the rule makers. Compare the Vipers performance numbers to other cars and rules are the omly thing that can stop it.

I don't know about that, in the testing for the Daytona 24 hours, the Vettes were faster than the lone ORECA Viper by about 1 sec. The Corvettes now have a 7.0 liter engine to try to compete with the 8.0 liter V-10 in the Vipers. Unfortunately, they've also dropped the sweet GM Goodwrench paint job from last year. Those cars looked great.

What are ORECA's plans for the Vipers in 2000? Are they running any, or are they concentrating on running the Reynard/Mopar prototype?

The last I had heard was that Oreca was not going to campaign any Vipers in the European series, but would supply customer versions. They have announced they will contend the ALMS season and hope to sell some Vipers for competition in the GARRC series.

From what I understand, ORECA was supposed to race the new Reynard/Dodge at the Rolex 24. However, while testing in southern France, they experienced the same types of problems with the car as the rest of the Reynard runners have, and withdrew from the Rolex 24. Shame, because I would love to have seen how they would have done, since they have several Le Mans victories under their belt.