Evening with a Legend: Ben Keating

Ben Keating - Professional Race Car Driver for ACO USA

Ben Keating is an American racing driver and business owner operating out of Victoria, Texas. Keating is the owner of 28 car auto dealerships across Texas, as part of The Keating Auto Group.

Contact: Ben Keating at Visit Online!

  

• This Evening With A Legend was hosted by Ruben Sanchez of the ACO USA.

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Evening with the Legend is a series of presentations exclusive to Legends of the Famous 24 Hours of Le Mans, giving us an opportunity to bring a piece of Le Mans to you. By sharing stories and highlights of the big event, you get a chance to become part of the Legend of Le Mans, with guests from different eras of over 100 years of racing.

Ben Keating is an American racing driver and business owner operating out of Victoria, Texas. He is the owner of 28 automotive dealerships across Texas as part of the Keating Auto Group. Since starting auto racing in 2006, he has competed in many auto races worldwide, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, and most recently the World Endurance Championship.

He has competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans nine [00:01:00] times with two wins under his belt, one with Aston Martin and most recently with Team Corvette. He is the only American driver to have won multiple world championships. Ben Keating began racing in 2006 after receiving a weekend track driving course as a Christmas present from his wife.

This Evening with a Legend was hosted by Ruben Sanchez of the ACO USA. I would like to extend a warm welcome to all the ACO members and our esteemed guests from the Corvette Club to join us tonight. Additionally, I’m thrilled to introduce our special guest for the evening, Ben Keating, the factory Corvette driver for the number 33 car for the WEC in the World Endurance Championship.

Tonight he joins us to share the remarkable victory at the prestigious 100th anniversary of Le Mans, as well as securing already the World Endurance Championship. My first question, Ben. All right. This was your first time at Le Mans with Corvette. Can you share the differences between Corvette and your previous teams?

I mean, what’s unique about Corvette compared to the other teams? How do they prepare, et cetera? This was my ninth year to [00:02:00] do the 24 Hours of Le Mans and in eight different cars. I think the only person who has matched my number of cars has been Rob Belth. I’m not a hundred percent sure on that, but I’ve driven almost everything.

You know, as you compare the Dodge Viper to the Ferrari 488, the Ford GT, the Porsche RSR, the Aston Martin, and now the Corvette, clearly different cars perform better at different tracks. What I would say about the Corvette is it is. Maybe the most well rounded car that I’ve ever driven in comparison. So the one Lamar last year, also driving the Aston Martin, the Aston Martin might have been the easiest car at Lamar specifically.

And I think that was because the long wheelbase really made it smooth and easy around the high speed corners. But the Aston [00:03:00] Martin was terrible at Portimao, which is this tight and twisty track. What I really love about the Corvette, it’s incredibly strong at Le Mans, but it’s pretty doggone good everywhere.

That’s what you need in terms of winning a championship. We were lucky enough to win the championship last year with the Aston Martin, but it wasn’t easy because it wasn’t a great car at every single track, whereas In the Corvette, you know, coming in that you have a decent chance at every single track.

Yeah. You asked about the team and what it was like going in with this Corvette racing factory team that’s been running pro all these years, it’s hard to underestimate. The value of that, even though, you know, we had a damper failure at the beginning of the race, went two laps down. The beauty of that is we changed the damper in 10 minutes.

I think most other teams would have gone down three or four laps and would have been completely out of the race. [00:04:00] Every pit stop. As a driver, I come in and I know that if I hit my marks, if I charge into the pit lane and I stop on the line on the board, if I do my job well, I know we’re going to gain positions in the pits every time we come in for a stop because the team is just that good.

And it’s so nice to have that much confidence in the guys you’re driving for. And I’ll say these guys are more serious than Any other team I’ve ever raced for. And I appreciate that I’ve been racing in GTM. Most of the teams I’ve been racing for, I’ve been the customer. So I’m the guy paying the bills.

I’m the guy that they’re all catering to. So when I made a mistake, the response has usually been, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to overcome it. It’s going to be okay. You know, no big deal. With these guys, when I make a mistake, they’re all up in my business. They’re all after me. I made a joke out of it actually, after the first couple of races, [00:05:00] because I had a long driver change at one of the races and they were ready to drop the car and ready for us to go and I wasn’t across the line yet, I cost us two seconds in a pit stop and the pit crew guys were in my face, upset that I cost them two seconds.

On their stock and I’m making them look bad. I appreciate that competitive nature. I appreciate the fact that everybody wants to be the best at their job. It just doesn’t exist like that at most of the other teams. You know, the old adage, you don’t win LeMans, LeMans chooses its winner. Arriving at Le Mans, you know, winning at Sebring, you did it as well in Portimao, and then Spa, second place.

I mean, the team had to have come in at a pretty confident level. I know you had some issues in the race, you had some issues in qualifying that I want to address here shortly, but what was the mood before Le Mans? Did you feel we got a really strong opportunity? I know you said before that it’s a crapshoot, that you never know what’s going to happen.

I strongly [00:06:00] believe that every car in a 24 hour race is a long shot. Anything can happen. An LMP2 car can lose their mind for a split second and run over you and take you out and it’s all over. Has nothing to do with you. It seems like Lamont chooses you. I’m going to go back to Spa. I was the only GT driver who chose to start the race on rain tires.

It was a bad decision. Everybody else was correct, except for me. And because I was losing so much time on the rain tires, because we had to come in for an extra stop, we went down a lap and we seemed to be out of the race for Spa. The way that all worked out extremely lucky got our lap back. We got the wave buyer, the pass around, which is this new thing for the W.

E. C. for this year. We got that 3 times at spa and the way we ended up being able to get 2nd place. Was just miraculous. It almost felt like we were chosen in that situation as [00:07:00] well. Clearly going into the race, we had to be one of the favorites because we were leading the championship. We’d gotten first place, first place, second place.

Everyone was talking to us. Like we were one of the favorites. We felt like one of the favorites, but I won’t allow anybody to feel that You can’t let down your guard. You briefly touched on it. Nico let down his guard and had a big wreck right before qualifying. The team had to rebuild the car. We only got out to get two laps in in qualifying.

It’s really hard when you have co drivers named Nico and Nikki. One of the best performances of the weekend was Nikki driving a car that had a terrible setup on it and putting it within HyperPole that was just miraculous that we even made it into qualifying. Then I had the honor this first time in the history of the race that they required the bronze rated driver to [00:08:00] qualify and hyperpole.

I like the car set up differently than Nico and Nikki. The team made a bunch of changes to the car specifically for me for qualifying and the car was. Unbelievable, really strong. And I ended up doing three laps in qualifying that would have been the poll. And I think I ended up being something like I get the poll by 1.

3 seconds. So we start the race in front. We’re racing in P1, 90 minutes in, Nicky comes on the radio and says, we’ve got a problem. The car is super difficult to drive. I don’t know what’s broken, but something’s wrong. So we come in for an unexpected pit stop. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just standing in the garage, watching the guys, the guy on the front, right?

Just starts yelling broken, broken, broken. They put it on skates. They roll it in. They change the front right damper 10 minutes to change the damper. We go down for two laps. If you followed the 24 hours of Lamar at all [00:09:00] over the last hundred years, you know that you don’t get the opportunity to make up.

When you’re down two laps in the history of the race, it doesn’t happen this year. For the first time ever, they’ve introduced this safety car and this pass around the IMSA dicing of turning wet into a little bit of IMSA, which I’m not a huge fan of, even though I greatly benefited from it. Because we had all been in the race for so many years, everybody in the team, the announcers on the television, everybody on the team, the drivers, the engineers, everybody felt like our race is over.

Our day is done. You just don’t get the opportunity to come back when you’re two laps down. Then we had the first safety car right as the big rain came down. That was a pivotal moment for me in the race, but what a lot of people don’t realize it was a big moment for us because we came in early, we put rain tires [00:10:00] on, we went back out.

Then the safety car came out, we had made the right call and we were going to get our lap back. We were going to get one of our laps back. I don’t think anybody realizes this other than the people who are care about it. But when you come in for a pit stop, they’re not supposed to let you out at the end of pit lane until the whole line of cars has passed our leader pitted.

So we were going to have the leader behind us and we were going to get our lap back. Unfortunately, we had a Ferrari in front of us that chose to stay out on slicks. He could not keep the pace of the safety car. And so the guy at the end of pit lane thought that the line of cars had already passed. They let all the leaders out.

And so the leaders ended up getting in front of us because the Ferrari in front of us couldn’t keep the pace car pace. And so we ended up not getting our lap back, even though we argued with the race director for an hour and a half while we were under safety car. They did not correct it. We did not get our lap back.

And then I was just [00:11:00] angry. Then I thought, okay, not only did we have this bad luck, but now we got screwed by the race director. And I thought our race is really over now. I had to go back and watch the race to see really what happened. Cause I didn’t really understand it. The fact is that we ended up getting one lap back under safety car because of the new rule, partly because Nico ran to the front and got in front of the leader, partly because we were lucky that the leader was behind us at that moment in time, the way the stints and strategy were working out.

But we got one lap back that way, and then it’s easy to say that we drove the other lap back. But as I’ve watched the race, what I now realize is that. Every single car in the race had a problem of some sort during the race, one by one. So out of 21 GT cars that started the race, only nine GT cars finished.

That may not be unusual in the older races [00:12:00] of Le Mans. With the modern day race cars, that is really unusual. There was a really high attrition rate, and even the cars that finished One by one, every single one of the cars had a problem of some sort, and that is really what allowed us to drive back to the lead, and it definitely feels like somewhere in the universe, Le Mans chose us, definitely feels that way.

It felt that way last year. It definitely feels that way this year, more than any other time. I don’t understand how we had the opportunity to win. Any other way than if we were just chosen. Like you pointed out, you were down to 21st by the six hour mark. Then I think Nico got you back up to 12 within the seventh hour with that one unlapping.

I know you had the unfortunate with the pace card. It is what it is, but it doesn’t matter because the result was we wanted anyway, right? But I wanted to get back to you when you mentioned qualifying, because I remember an interview you did with the WEC, where the [00:13:00] car was six seconds a lap off the pace.

And that’s an eternity in racing when we’re talking a tenth of a second. Sure. What the hell did they do to get that car that you got on the pole by a second? I mean, cause that’s a huge spread. It’s three different things. Nobody talks about the fact that all the cars play major games on performance until race day.

Nobody wants to look too fast because they’re afraid you. They’re going to get slowed down. You know, if you don’t play the game, then you’re not in the game. Some of it is us playing the game, just like everybody else is playing the game. But I don’t know why this car is different than last year’s car.

It’s a different chassis. Everything should be set up the exact same. They’re on the same setup pad, the same jig, everything should be identical. I can’t tell you why, but it’s not. And a big part of our issues all week long is that. The team just wasn’t willing to admit that the car was different and needed [00:14:00] something else.

They were so committed to, we were leading the race when we got knocked out of last year’s race. We’ve got a setup that everybody loved. You are going to love it. I promise. They were so committed to the setup that they ran last year that they were very slow. to move away from it. And the third thing, which is really significant, is GM has what they call a DIL simulator.

They call it the Driver in Loop Simulator. That’s actually where I spent all day today in North Carolina at the GM DIL preparing for Fuji, which is our next race. But we spent a lot of time preparing for Le Mans in the sim. What we noticed is that I like a car with a much more stable rear than my co drivers.

My co drivers want a much more stable front. I believe that it is the fact that they are all left foot breakers and they’re all on both pedals the whole time. hustling the car [00:15:00] around a corner, they are carrying much more speed into the corner and trail braking and doing those types of things as they go around and they’re instantaneously in between the pedals.

I am still a right foot breaker, which means I have more time as I transition between the pedals and it also means that I’m still comfortable trail braking, just not as much as what they are doing. I like to get on the throttle earlier than they do, and I like a more confident rear. And driving on the Sim with my co drivers at the same time, it became really clear that I just like a more confident rear.

One of the really nice things about the C8R GTE Corvette Is that it’s an easy, simple, quick change to change the rear bar. What we did for qualifying and for the race is that every time I got in the car, they would go completely soft on the rear [00:16:00] bar for me and midway on the rear bar for my co drivers, that was a significant change in terms of the handling in the car, but it was a really big change for me in qualifying.

We were working on the car so much before we got to qualifying that we weren’t really happy with it yet. And so not only did we make a big step in the setup of the car overall, but they also customized it for me, having it much more confidence in the rear. And golly, when I qualified in that car, it was the best car I’d ever driven at Le Mans.

It was so easy to do an amazing lap. A second lead on qualifying. I mean, that’s pretty unheard of. So you definitely came alive. That’s for sure. Move forward. I know you weren’t expected to drive at night. I like driving at the rain, but I guess I’m a little bit crazy. You did three stints at night in the rain.

I mean, you definitely brought back that deficit you had. Throughout my history at Le Mans, prior to this year, you can’t make up any lost time. In [00:17:00] GTM, you got one bronze, one silver, and one pro. And everybody has to do a minimum of six hours in the car. My philosophy has always been if I’m one second a lap slower in the rain or one second a lap slower at night, then I shouldn’t drive in those conditions because I don’t want to give up any time that I don’t have to give up.

The plan was for me to not drive in rain and to not drive at night. One of the things that I bring to the table is that I’m comfortable driving for a really long period of time, especially at Le Mans. If they would allow me to do my whole six hours at once, I would do it. I’m really comfortable going for a long period of time.

So after we put the new damper on the car, it was kind of like, okay, we’re running in 21st place. We’re down two laps. They put me in the car coming out of the garage. It kind of felt like, okay, this race is over. Let’s just put Ben in the car, let him get his time knocked out. And so I went out and my first stint was great.

It was daylight. [00:18:00] Everything was comfy. Halfway through my second stint, I came out of Arnage, which is the slowest corner on the track. You’re flat out all the way up into the Porsche curves. You’re in sixth gear where you turn into the Porsche curves is where you transition from being on public road to being on the permanent track.

Normally you would just barely break downshift one time and turn in. I’m going to guess that our minimum speed in that corner is about 150 miles an hour. I’m in sixth gear flat out down that straightaway right to the point where I should be breaking and downshifting and turning in and I hit a wall of water.

One of the things that made Le Mans so treacherous this year is that You had a lot of rain, but it was a big heavy rain cloud over one corner over one section of the track. It would be over one chicane. And so I pull up into this area where it’s suddenly downpouring. I think I literally prayed out loud.

It [00:19:00] may be the only time I’ve ever prayed out loud in a car. And I made the decision not to turn. I made the decision to stay on the public road, kept it in the crown of the road, hopefully having less water there, slowed it down slowly, slowed it down in a straight line, whipped it around once I got stopped, came back and tiptoed on slicks around the Porsche curves.

I came on the radio and I said, guys, I’m giving up way too much time. We need rain tires on the car. I feel like I’m costing the team so much time because I’m looking at the Delta on the dash. And I’ve realized that I’ve just cost us 20 seconds, which is an eternity. I’m feeling guilty about the decision that I’ve made.

So I come in, I get out of the car, Nico gets in the car on rain tires. And I look at the monitor and I watch every car that comes up to that same spot has decided to try to make the turn and they’re into the wall, one after [00:20:00] another, just piling into each other. I felt so guilty when I was in the car, it turned out to be a genius decision because we got to finish the race.

And that is where some of our biggest competitors ended their race because they tried to make the turn. When I get out of the car, I talked to the strategist and I asked those guys. When do you want me back? They said, go get sleep, you know, wake up at 4am, get something to eat, get dressed and be down in the garage at 5am.

Interesting fact about Lamar, they always have it. Whatever weekend is closest to the summer solstice so that you have the maximum amount of daylight. It gets daylight around 530 or so it starts to get daylight. And so I was expecting to get into the car about 530. I went into my hospitality room that I had where all my guests were there.

And I stood up in front of timing and scoring, and I explained to all of them how seventh place would be the maximum result that we could hope for at this point, which is all funny now because we won, but tried to sleep [00:21:00] through the fireworks, which was impossible. Sounded like World War three was going on outside my room, expecting to wake up at 4 a.

m. At 1 a. m. They came and woke me up. And said we need you in the garage right now. Throw on a driving suit, driving clothes, I run down to the garage, literally run down there. What’s happened? And they’ve said, we don’t know exactly what’s happened, but Nico is not feeling good. Nico. Passed out in the stairwell of hospitality.

He’s sick. We’ve got him at the doctor. We don’t know what’s going on over there. All we know is we need you in the car right now. And so, Nicky couldn’t drive any longer because he just done a triple stint. I don’t want to drive at night because my 51 year old eyes don’t see very well. And because my most important job is bringing the car home safely, I don’t take as much risk.

So, I’m slower. I don’t want to give up any time I don’t have to give up. But you do what you got to do. So I get ready, I get in the car [00:22:00] and I do a triple stint from 2 a. m. to 5 a. m. in the car. When you’re driving the car, you have no idea what’s going on on the track around you. I’ve got my engineers telling me what other cars are doing in terms of lap time.

Now I can look back on it and say, I’m really proud of the job that I did at night during that three hour stint. And I believe it ended up being one of the reasons why we won the race, because most of the other bronzes had the same strategy of waiting until daylight to drive in the car. On Sunday morning is what we call happy hour.

That’s when the tracks all rubbered in, the temperatures are nice and cool. And you can see when all the other bronzes were in the car and still had to do the maximum amount of their drive time, we had our fast guys in there just killing them to the tune of. Anywhere from four to six seconds a lap. And when you’re doing 15 laps in an hour, that’s 90 seconds per [00:23:00] hour of track time that you’re making up on everybody.

And so I felt like I was able to hold my own during the night and really put Nico and Nikki in position to get us back into the lead in the morning. Have you driven in Le Mans ever before at night? Oh, yeah, plenty of times. But as I said before, I’ve driven a bunch at night. I actually like driving at night, but I’m about two seconds a lap slower at night than I am in the daylight.

And always before you don’t get the opportunity to make up lost time. And so I don’t want to give up two seconds a lap if I don’t have to. From 2019 forward, I’ve always had the goal of trying to do all of my six hours of driving in the last nine hours of the race. I want to get in the car around 6am and knock it out on Sunday morning.

Now with the new safety car rules, it’s not that important anymore. And what was wrong with Nico? He’s a 22 year old kid. Nico is younger than both of my children. He would say, I have [00:24:00] no idea what happened because I have a little bit more experience than he does. I’ll say, I think he had what they call a vasovagal response.

I think he got up out of bed too quickly and fainted. I’ve only had it happen to me one other time. And I’ll say, it’s a scary experience. I thought I was having a stroke. I think it was a Bezo Bagel response. I think as he got up out of bed and started to walk downstairs, he fainted. And at 5 a. m. when they say, okay, pit now, come to the box for a driver change.

My question was, who’s getting in the car? When they said Nico was getting in the car, it made me feel good to know that we weren’t going to have a problem with every driver getting their six hours of drive time. Because that’s always a concern. If you have a driver who’s sick and can’t drive, Then you can be disqualified.

It all worked out fine. He ended up feeling well for the rest of the race. And of course, when it came to the end, he felt better than he’d ever felt in his life. Of course, you know, [00:25:00] crossing the line, but those density did also, I mean, he really crawled back to the lap down at the, in the moment and ended up one lap ahead at the flag, which is.

At the end, it all depends on where the overall leader finished. We had about a two minute lead specifically because the 85 Porsche had to do a last minute brake change because I did so much of my drive time. I did an hour and a half on Saturday during the daylight before the rain. I did three hours at night.

And so I’d already done four and a half hours of my drive time. By the time happy hour started in my experience, whoever drives From 6 a. m. to 9 a. m. on Sunday morning is going to put in the fastest laps. We put them in position to be able to gobble up all that extra time because almost every other car was running their bronze during happy hour.

Nothing against bronze drivers, I’m the same way. But I get into a rhythm. If I’m driving a 3 minute 55 second lap, I will [00:26:00] tend to just do that same thing over and over again like a robot. I might not always be able to find that one or two extra seconds of speed the way those guys will. And I really think that’s what happened.

You know, they got in the car. They found that extra time. Nico drove the fastest lap of the race of any GT car during that time. When the other bronzes were in the car, just kind of putting in their time and running their lap time. It did make a big difference throughout the last nine hours of the race.

Well, reflecting back now that you won the championship, and you’ve been at Le Mans for the last eight straight years, what’s the greatest accomplishment? Would you rather win Le Mans, or would you rather win the World Championship for WEC? Having won both, it’s hard to answer that. If you gave me the choice at the beginning of the year, do you win the Le Mans or do you get to win the championship?

I’d say Le Mans every time. In IMSA, if you gave me the choice of winning Daytona or winning the championship, I’m going to take Daytona every [00:27:00] time. It’s the big race of the year. It’s the most historical value. Most people remember what happened in the 24 hours of Le Mans. Very few people remember what happened in the championship.

It’s a wonderful feather to have in my cap. I love the fact that I’ve done it back to back wins at Le Mans, back to back world championships. Those are really, really special. Those are something I’ll have with me for the rest of my days. They’re big accomplishments. But if you have the choice, you take Le Mans every single time because it’s so hard.

You only get one chance to win a 24 hour race. Every car is a long shot. You have to have luck. You have to have skill. You have to have a great team. You have to have no mistakes. It’s just really, really hard to pull it off. It’s an incredible accomplishment. All the diversity you had this year to come back and win.

And for the Centenary, I mean, that’s Definitely a unique trophy that’s only won for this year that you have on your trophy case now. Let’s move over to 2024. I mean, you’ve [00:28:00] been among for the nine straight years with eight different manufacturers and LMP2 and in GTE categories. What’s next for 2024? I have to get an invite, but it is my hope.

So next year for the World Endurance Championship, LMP2 will not be in the championship, but they will run at Le Mans. They have reserved 15 spots at Le Mans for the LMP2 class. I hope to be in LMP2 in the Pro Am class at Le Mans. I want to race less. You know, I’m doing a full season of IMSA in the LMP2 class.

Uh, I’m doing a full season of the World Endurance Championship and right now I’m spending about four months of my year at a racetrack and it’s too much for me. I am planning to race less. I expect to be an EMSA in the LP two. I hope to be at lama, which will be my 10th year in nine different cars. I’m hopeful to be a, uh, third year in a row winner in the class, but there’s a lot of that that’s yet to be seen, the future long term.

Do [00:29:00] you plan on continuing racing and for how long? I mean, I love it. So I do this for fun. I sell cars for my vocation and I race for my recreation, but I’ve bitten with the bug. I’m addicted to the drug, whatever you want to call it. I don’t see myself leaving racing. I really love, I’m super excited in another three weeks.

I’m going to race in a 24 hour race. A chump car race at VIR, that is as much fun as any other racing that I do. I expect to do Daytona for a long time. I expect to do more chump car racing. And I still have the Viper that I ran in 2015, the AMG that I won. Sebring in the Ford GT that I won and lost Le Mans in and I’ll own this C8R Corvette at the end of the year.

And so I hope to have time to go out and play with those toys in some historic racing or track days. It’ll be a long time before I walk away from racing. It’s just going to look a little bit [00:30:00] different. It’s going to be a different season. Once a racer, always a racer. It’s hard to get rid of that out of the blood.

This episode has been brought to you by the Automobile Club of the West and the ACO USA. From the awe inspiring speed demons that have graced the track to the courageous drivers who have pushed the limits of endurance, the 24 Hours Le Mans is an automotive spectacle like no other. For over a century, the 24 Hours Le Mans has urged manufacturers to innovate for the benefit of future motorists, and it’s a celebration of the relentless pursuit of speed and excellence in the world of motorsports.

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