8:23 am: Your Morning Cup of Recap Includes Viper In-Car Video

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.

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10:24 pm: More from Ralph Gilles’s Talk on the New Viper

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.

7:23 pm: Watch the Force of the Viper ACR

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…

6:57 pm: Wallpaper of the Record-Breaking 2010 Dodge Viper ACR

2010 Dodge Viper SRT-10 ACR

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’!








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5:21 pm: Ralph Gilles on Building the Legend of Dodge

“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.”

4:40 pm: Standing in the Winner’s Circle

Record-Breaking Congrats
Ralph Gilles congratulates driver Chris Winkler on his record-breaking lap in the 2010 Viper ACR (before sending him back out on the track to try a few more runs), which shattered the previous production car record of 1:35.075 by more than a full second.

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3:42 pm: The Viper ACR Breaks the Track 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.

3:33 pm: The ACR Makes Another Run

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).

3:17 pm: A New Batch of Photos Have Been Loaded To Our Flickr

2010 Voodoo TestWant to see the sights of today’s 2010 Viper ACR test at Laguna Seca as we’re seeing them? Head over to our Flickr group to see all of our latest shots as they happen, from Chris Winkler behind the wheel of the ACR to Ralph Gilles trying out the track in his own personal Viper Voodoo — plus plenty of behind-the-scenes looks at today’s festivities.


2:46 pm: Watch Video of the ACR’s Test Run

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…