The Dodge Viper's motorsport lineage began in earnest in 1996, when Chrysler developed the Viper GTS-R in collaboration with Reynard Motorsport and Oreca. That original racing variant competed in the IMSA GT Championship and BPR Global GT Series before finding its greatest success at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Oreca achieved outright GTS class victories in 1999 and 2000. After the GTS-R era wound down, the Viper name returned to endurance racing in a new guise for the LM GTE era.
The revived GTE car was unveiled at the 2012 New York Auto Show and was constructed by SRT Motorsports — the racing arm that carried the SRT (Street and Racing Technology) brand — in partnership with Riley Technologies. It retained the iconic Viper V10 engine, now displacing 8.4 litres, and wore the traditional numerical designation of cars 91 and 93.
The Viper GTE was powered by the same naturally aspirated 8.4-litre V10 engine derived from the production Viper SRT-10, adapted for endurance racing competition under balance-of-performance regulations. The car's large-displacement engine meant that at Le Mans in particular, balance-of-performance rules imposed an unusually low rev ceiling of around 4,700 rpm, a concession that played to the V10's inherent low-end torque characteristics rather than its outright peak power. The chassis and bodywork were developed jointly to comply with LM GTE homologation requirements, replacing the earlier Viper Competition Coupe-derived GT2 car that privateer teams had raced in the American Le Mans Series.
The GTE car made its racing debut at the 2012 Mid-Ohio Sports Car Challenge in the American Le Mans Series, with the two-car lineup fielding drivers Dominik Farnbacher and Kuno Wittmer in car 91 and Marc Goossens and Tommy Kendall in car 93. The two SRT entries finished 10th and 12th in the GT class. Over the full 2012 ALMS season, the team included Ryan Hunter-Reay and Jonathan Bomarito among its drivers and finished third in the GT class championship.
The car made its 24 Hours of Le Mans debut in 2013, finishing eighth in the GTE Pro class and 24th overall — a competitive if not spectacular result for a new programme on one of motorsport's most demanding circuits.
When the American Le Mans Series merged with the Rolex Sports Car Series to form the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship for 2014, SRT entered the combined series' GTLM class. At the 2014 24 Hours of Daytona, the two Vipers finished third and sixth in class. Later in the season, the No. 93 Viper took a class victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Brickyard Grand Prix, with both cars taking podium finishes at Watkins Glen and Mosport around the same period. At Watkins Glen, the cars were repainted in the red-and-white livery echoing the successful Oreca Viper GTS-R colours of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The 2014 season ended with SRT claiming the team championship and Kuno Wittmer winning the drivers' championship at Petit Le Mans. However, Chrysler had already announced in March 2014 that it would withdraw the Vipers from that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, and at the season's conclusion the entire factory SRT Motorsports programme was discontinued.
The Viper GTE represented the conclusion of roughly two decades of factory-backed Viper endurance racing. A parallel GT3 variant — the Viper GT3-R — was made available to privateer teams from late 2013 at an estimated cost of $459,000, sharing much of the GTE car's technology while complying with Group GT3 regulations and featuring the 8.4-litre V10 producing approximately 600 hp under balance-of-performance rules. The GT3-R allowed the Viper name to continue in customer racing even after the factory GTLM programme ended. The Viper GTS-R and GTE line collectively spanned the transition from GT2 to GTE regulations, proving that an American V10 sports car could compete at the highest levels of international endurance racing against the dominant European machinery of its era.