Ben Keating, among the fastest LMGTE AM drivers, reveals why and who are the favorites for the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGTE AM drivers after winning it in 2022 together with Marco Sorensen. Ben ends the interview by sharing his thoughts about WEC LMGTE AM class in 2024.

CRR: In 2022 you achieved 3 out of 6 pole positions in LMGTE AM and you came very close at Sebring this season. Your lap time is close to the PRO drivers if not better. You regularly gain two seconds per lap compared to the less good bronze pilots. What is your recipe for being such a fast and reliable amateur driver?

Ben Keating: “Even in 2020, I got a few pole positions when the bronze and one of the other drivers would qualify which made it a little bit harder to see the performance of the bronze driver as an individual. But even, back then, in the Porsche we got a pole or two.
When they got to the bronze-only qualifying design, at the same time, I was moving to Aston Martin for 2021 and 2022.

This is my third year in a row to be on most of these tracks. You only have 3 practice sessions before qualifying with 3 different drivers, you are working on setup and so many different things that you don’t have much track time at a particular track before qualifying. If you don’t have enough history at these tracks, then you are starting behind. I think my experience at these tracks was critical to get up to speed quickly.

2022 was the second year that I stayed in the same car in WEC. Every car has a little difference in how they get to speed on a particular track. It really helped me to be a second year in a row to learn what the Aston likes compared to other cars and how to extract the speed out of the car.

Lastly, I learned how to drive a race car on a track late in life. I started racing on a track at 35, I’m now 51, soon to be 52. My first 10 years of racing were done in a Viper. My particular driving style favored the Aston Martin with a big front engine type of balance. That is a major reason why we were able to perform so well in qualifying.

Last year the Aston were particularly quick, a lot of time I might be P1 but Paul Dalla Lana would be P2 in the #98 Aston. I out-qualified the Ferrari PRO drivers at Sebring, the first race of the season because, I think, they were playing the political game in the first part of the season but realized then that they were sandbagging a little too much. In the second part of the season, as they showed their true form, Sarah Bovy out-qualified me twice.

For this season, Sarah is in a new car, as I am. The battle in qualifying continues to be close. She got the pole in her new Porsche; I was second in the Corvette.

All those factors come into play: I have a lot of experience in Sebring and I’m learning what the Corvette really likes.

This year the qualifying is 15’ but you start in cold tires whereas last year it was 10’ with warmed tires. The confidential Michelin everybody uses are designed to come out of the oven. Learning how to get heat in those tires quickly and learning to do a quick lap on a tire that may not be up to temperature or up to pressure yet is a new challenge where I think I have an advantage in the AM class from my years in racing in IMSA LMP2 on cold tires. At least right now; everybody will catch up.

To answer the second part of your question (reliability), I’m known as the old guy who can drive for a long time. As soon as I get off this call, I’m going bicycling and doing some training (ndlr: Ben showing his bike which is like the professional ones used at the Tour de France). To be able to drive fast for a long period of time, you must be able to make good decisions in a very hot situation where your heart rate is high. The only way I’ve found that I can simulate having a high heart rate for a long period of time is on a bicycle. I can be at 150 bpm on a bike for 3 hours and know how my body behaves at that high heart rate for a long period of time. I have enough data, I know how my body feels after 5 hours more than the other bronze drivers. After 2 hours of driving, when they ask me on the radio, could you do a third one? I know how I feel and will feel, which enables me to say yes consciously. For example, last year in Sebring during my first stint my rear left tire delaminated, so that, going in turn 17 at Sebring I had no grip, the car was very difficult to drive, and for 40’ in that car, my heart was at 175 bpm which is way too high for an old guy! Everybody on the team including myself was expecting me to be at the wheel for 3 hours straight. When they radioed to pit and said to stay in the car, I knew enough my body to say « NO! I need out! I need to be refreshed. » Everybody was surprised. In racing, when you are tired when you have a high heart rate and you are hot, you still must make good decisions. I feel the same way when I ride a bike.”

CRR: Do you agree with me that the quality of the bronze driver is essential to win in LMGTE AM?

Ben Keating: “Yes. There are a lot of very strong bronze drivers this year: Ahmad Al Harthy in the #25 Aston Martin, Luis Perez Companc in the #83 Ferrari, Sarah Bovy in the #85 Porsche, we are all very close. Unfortunately for them, each of them had an issue at a certain point in time at Sebring. Whether or not it was their fault is irrelevant. We won by a big margin not because we were fast, but just because we didn’t have any issues.

The bronze field is more competitive this year than it has been in past years.

Every car in the LMGTE AM class is required to have one bronze, one silver, one gold, or platinum (= PRO). If you look at the average lap time of all the bronze, all the silvers and all the PRO, the difference between the bronze is much larger than between the silvers and the difference between the silvers is larger than the difference between the Pros. You can’t expect the PRO to go out in the car and make up 0,5” per lap. Maybe if you have a super strong silver, you might be able to expect your silver to make 0,5” compared to the other silvers but 0,5” for the silver is probably not enough to pick up the differences between the bronzes. So, bottom line, the bronze is the biggest difference maker in the class.

This is what I like in WEC: my time behind the wheel really matters, probably more than anything else.”

CRR: At Le Mans, the safety car rule is changing with only one instead of three. The gap between competitors will shrink as in IMSA.

Ben Keating: “Let’s see what they’ll do. For the last two years in a row, they practiced that same safety car procedure, but it is not that way that it happened at Le Mans. They are talking about it. I would be shocked if they do it that way. I hope they don’t.

A safety car in Le Mans is used in two situations:

1. a crash is so bad that they need to bring out an ambulance or other vehicles to extract a driver.

2. when it is very dark, and you have safety crews on the track that drivers may not see. This happens more between midnight and 5 am because it is so dark, and you can’t really see.

The race starting at 4pm, you have already done 8 hours of racing by the time you get to midnight. If you have done a really good job and have a big lead on your competitors, you may be half a lap ahead of your main competitors. I would hate to see one safety car for the entire field. If they do it, it would completely change the way teams deal with strategy. I don’t want Le Mans to become Daytona or IMSA. I want to know that my time in the car matters.

We have been practicing it at Sebring just like in the last three years, but I hope they’ll not use it at Le Mans.”

CRR: Considering that the four cars on the grid are equal as we saw three of them being close in LMGTE PRO last year, that Corvette Racing is the only factory team on the grid, and that you are among the 4 best bronze drivers, you are the favorite team this year?

Ben Keating: “No, I would agree we are one of the favorites. I was the bronze driver of the team that won the Championship last year which makes me one of the favorites.

Only being one car in the championship is a disadvantage. Whoever is quick, the other teams are going to complain about that car. Last year, all the other teams complained I was too fast; Aston Martin had the advantage to say “We have three cars in the championship and the other two are not as quick; we have 3 or 4 cars in the ELMS with similar BoP and we are not running away with those poles or championships; look at our performance across a wide view of all the cars”. They were able to do very well with that argument. If I would have been the only Aston Martin out there, we would have been slowed down. It is a big disadvantage to have only one car. The Corvette was in the PRO class last year. One can look at the performance last year versus the other PRO cars and have a good measure of what to expect. That helps a little bit.

Also, remember what I said earlier: at Sebring we didn’t win because we were the fastest car. The Porsche and the Ferrari were quicker than the Corvette. Sebring didn’t favor the Corvette. I hope that Portimao will be a good track for the Corvette.

Overall, I don’t think I’m the favorite. One could easily list 5 or 6 cars that have a chance of winning the Championship: I expect Ferrari to have a good year with Luis Perez Companc in the #83 Ferrari, Thomas Flohr in the #54 Ferrari is getting better and better every year, Sarah Bovy in the #85 Porsche, Ahmad Al Harty in the #25 Aston Martin, Paul Dalla Lana in the #98 Aston Martin is a previous champion.

The other thing is that Le Mans is a double-point race. If you look back several years, whoever won Le Mans won the Championship. In 2021 we ended second at Le Mans and got second place in the Championship. In 2022, we won Le Mans and won the Championship. Because it is a double-point race it makes a huge difference.

Things out of your control can happen at Le Mans and if you miss that race, you are out for the Championship.

I’m hopeful we can have a clean race at Le Mans because you can’t win the Championship without winning at Le Mans.”

CRR: During the interview before Sebring test days, you said you were not happy about GT3 with “all these BoP changes all the time”. GT3 will replace LMGTE AM next year in WEC. Where will we see you next year?

Ben Keating: “Let me explain more. I love driving a GT3 car; I’ve done well in lots of GT3 races. I was in the Viper GT3 for 3 years, and I was in an AMG GT3 for 3 years and did well. I’ve something in my brain, something in my soul, I pour so much effort, energy, and money into racing that I want to know that I have a fair chance of doing well. If I don’t believe I can perform at the same level as everybody else, then I lose my mind. I just can’t put up with that.

My feeling is twofold: what I love about WEC is that all the manufacturers were in the GTE PRO class for a long time, they have a lot of data, and they do a good job of balancing the field with those four cars. You still have some stand-out performers. In last year’s seasons, Aston Martin was a top performer but if you look at Le Mans for example everybody was expecting the Aston Martin to be fast and there was only one Porsche in the top qualifying cars but at the end of lap 3 of the race the top 6 were all Porsches and they were faster than anyone else on track. So even though WEC and ACO have done a great job of balancing those cars, you still have the situation where the manufacturer has clearly played the game well.

It is very hard with four manufacturers. I suspect that when WEC and ACO are running a GT3 class, they will have somewhere around 10 manufacturers. I believe that, if it is difficult with four, it is impossible with 10.

If I was running a racing series, I would do the same thing because that is where the money is. At the end of the day, this is a business, and you have to chase where the money is. The money comes from the manufacturers and all of them are building GT3 cars. Very few are building GTE.

I don’t blame them for doing it but when I look at where I want to spend my personal money or energy or effort, I believe I don’t have a chance to do well in the face of other manufacturers who want to win a particular race.

The other piece of it, in all cases of GTE, the manufacturer is heavily involved. Most of the Ferrari are run by AF Corse, Corvette is run by Corvette Racing, the Proton Porsche is pretty much a factory team. The factories are heavily involved.

My understanding is what GT3 racing is going to be in the future, is that they would like for all of them to be customer teams. When you get into customer teams you get into more funny business. I don’t think that a customer racing team is as concerned about doing everything at a level playing field in a straightforward and honest way. I don’t want to be in a situation where somebody did well because they cheated when my brand was honest about their performance and therefore, we don’t have a chance to win a race.

That is the largest piece of it.

The secondary piece of it is that I really love the way WEC racing is designed where the bronze is making the difference. My time in the car really counts; my time in the car makes the difference.

The biggest difference between bronze drivers is braking. It is a skill to learn how to brake late, being at the limit before locking up, and knowing when to get off the brake. If you just let off the brake immediately, you’ll induce an understeer that won’t let you carry the minimum speed through the corner. I developed this skill. The biggest difference maker between bronze drivers in GTE is the braking skill.

The biggest difference maker in GT3 is that they all have analog brakes and when you have ABS it makes all the bronze drivers close because everybody can stand on the brakes like a 100 pounds gorilla and let the computer do all the work. It brings all the bronze drivers much closer to their performance which is great for the ones at the back of the field. Because I’m in front of the field, I’m losing my advantage. A lot of the spirit of racing is lost with ABS brakes. The skill is not so important when you let the computer do all the work. That is why I enjoy racing in IMSA because that is where the difference is.”

CRR: Will we still see you at WEC next year?

Ben Keating: “I don’t know. Clearly, I’ll not do a full season in WEC. For the last three years, I’ve been doing WEC and IMSA racing. I spend one-third of my year on racetracks. I have a bunch of other things I’d like to do. I have about 30 businesses that I actively run, I have a family whom I love spending time with, I have a bunch of spaces I love going to, and lots of things I love doing. Even though I’m so passionate about racing, I need to do a little bit less of it. Maybe spend 20% of my year on it. With the change of GT3 in WEC, I feel it is a good time for me to decide. As I have been quite successful for 4 years, it is easy for me to say, “Let’s take a break”. I still have the GTSR Viper that I raced in Le Mans in 2015, the AMG GT3 that I won the 12 hours of Sebring, the FORD GT that I ran in Le Mans in 2019; I would enjoy racing some of those older cars in historic races.

I would enjoy doing Le Mans one more time. If I can find a seat at Le Mans maybe. With GT3 having so many manufacturers coming in, almost all the seats in Le Mans will be taken up by full-season drivers. I don’t expect to be in WEC for a full season.”

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