Want to feel a bit of the knuckle-whitening forces endured by driver Chris Winkler yesterday as he careened around a few of the sharp turns of the hallowed Laguna Seca racetrack? At left you can watch the new record-breaking Viper from a riveting in-car perspective.

Dodge President & CEO Ralph Gilles admits that with such a powerful car, they kind of came in expecting to break the record. Perhaps no one can speak to the significance of the moment better than driver Chris Winkler, who, after some well-deserved accolades, this morning returns to his day job as an SRT engineer.

“It’s an incredible honor,” Winkler says. “I’m glad that they didn’t just hire a professional, and went to one of the guys who actually developed the car. Ralph and all the guys at SRT — I’m just thankful that they gave me the opportunity.”

And as one of the engineers who helped build this beast, perhaps there’s no one better qualified to speak to all of the modifications the crew had to make to take a street-legal Viper ACR and bring it up to record-breaking snuff.

“We took it off the assembly line, put it in a transporter, and brought it to Laguna Seca — basically, very little,” he admits. “We dropped the ride height, we turned the knobs to their suggested setting, and that was it. The car is fantastic. And there’s still more in it for sure.”

At left you can watch the full version of the post-record speech by Ralph Gilles, President and CEO for Dodge Brand and Head of Design. In it he introduces the new 2010 Dodge Viper and reveals that a special “Laguna Seca” edition of the Viper (to be called the “1:33″ special edition) will be produced to commemorate the record 1:33.915 lap set by the car on the afternoon of Nov. 24, 2009 at Laguna Seca. Check back for more video and photos from what was an unbelievably eventful day at the legendary California track.

See a great quick clip of one of Chris Winkler’s later runs almost shaking our camera off the wall. He was trying various lines, and this one obviously brought him a little closer than we anticipated…

You asked for bigger images, so here’s the first batch. We expect to see the desktops of every office in America altered by lunchtime tomorrow, so you’d better get crackin’!

Wallpaper – 1280×1024

Wallpaper – 1280×1024

Wallpaper – 1280×1024

Wallpaper – 1280×1024

“We came out here to test and explore the limits of the car,” Ralph Gilles says. “This is a very respected track. There’s some history here. So at the back of our hearts there was some pull to come back here.” Just after the record-breaking run, Gilles shed his own race suit (for just a few minutes) to say a few words about this historic occasion, at a track that has a lot of historic significance for Dodge. You can watch a quick clip of it to the left.

“The car has been a lot more successful than we ever imagined,” Gilles admits. “There’s some very serious Dodge legend being built again here, and I really like that. That’s a dimension of Viper I really wanted to keep fanning the flames of.”

“Viper is known as a great cruising car, a great hobbyist car,” Gilles says. “But now it’s becoming a track legend.” To commemorate that legend cemented here today, Gilles announced a spur-of-the-moment plan to produce a limited “1:33″ edition of the Viper — limited to 33 cars. “If he’d broken the record in 1:34, there would be one more car — but he was a bit too fast,” Gilles laughs. “Now this car will be one of 33.”

So how did he do it? Gilles credited the 2010 Viper’s newly engineered 5th gear, with a ratio revised from 0.741 to 0.796, along with a shorter shifter height and a new wing for 2010 that gives more lateral downforce. “Even after owning one myself for some time, I’m still amazed with what the Dodge Viper can do on and off the race track,” he says.

For his part, Chris Winkler, living up to his famed unassuming demeanor, gave all credit to the car. “It was definitely exciting, but a somewhat uneventful lap from behind the steering wheel,” says Winkler, who is actually relatively new to the course. “The Dodge Viper ACR has amazing power and handles like a dream, so following my first practice here last month, I came away pretty confident that we’d be able to set a new record.”

After six screaming hot laps around Laguna Seca, Chris Winkler, testing the 2010 Viper ACR, just broke the track record with a scorching time of 1:33.915 on lap seven.

Watch the clip to get a feel for the raw power of that Viper crossing the line in record time.

Chris isn’t done yet, heading back out on the track to see what this Viper’s limits really are. Watch the video of him taking the famous Andretti hairpin (and be glad that’s not you trying to pin that turn).

Here’s a quick clip of the Viper ACR tearing down the track, with a healthy roar but still not at full throttle, from a perspective opposite the grandstand. Note that the color scheme is the reverse of last year’s: black with red, with the added addition of the red wheels. If you can see it at that speed, of course…