Ben Keating might be by definition an amateur racer, but he is, in his own words, ‘one of the top Bronze drivers’ in the FIA World Endurance Championship in terms of performance and results – with the Texas native driven by the quest to be the best, both on and off-track.
Keating is unquestionably at the peak of his powers right now – as witnessed by back-to-back successes in FIA WEC’s LMGTE Am category in 2022 and 2023, making him the only American to secure multiple titles in the series – but it was not always so.
Born into a family of car dealers, it was perhaps pre-destined that Keating would tread the same career path, and he did not venture into motorsport until 2007, at the age of 35.
“I didn’t know anything about racing cars,” he admits in the latest instalment of FIA WEC’s ‘Beyond the Track’ docuseries, out today. “I didn’t bring a helmet, I wore shorts. I did all the ‘no nos’, all the wrong things.”
The outcome, he candidly reveals, was ‘six wrecks’ from his first six appearances behind the wheel. He has improved significantly over the intervening years, and alongside TF Sport team-mates Daniel Juncadella and Jonny Edgar, triumphed in last season’s curtain-raising contest in Qatar on the way to sixth in the final LMGT3 standings.
“Performance is everything for him – he doesn’t care about the rest,” comments Juncadella, who joins Keating at home on his ranch in ‘Beyond the Track’ to find out how the American unwinds when not selling cars or racing them.
Those are rare pauses in a life otherwise lived at full-throttle, from the circuit to the forecourt. With no fewer than 32 showrooms under his umbrella, Keating rarely has time to slow down, and he acknowledges that he enjoys the ‘competition’ element of the profession.
The episode explores how he inspires his staff, with wife Kathleen characterising him as ‘so good at empowering and trusting people, giving them an opportunity and then letting them go’ while hailing his commitment to his craft and his generosity of spirit.
Of course, he is far less generous to his rivals on-track – an environment in which he ‘wants to dominate’ – and the frustration of an early bath in the downpour of COTA last year demonstrated just how much success means to him, as a weather-related issue dashed the #33 Corvette crew’s hopes of a famous victory in Keating’s backyard.
Indeed, while it may be something he does ‘for fun’, motorsport is palpably much more than merely a hobby for the two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans class-winner, who describes it as his ‘adrenaline flush’ – a stress-reliever from the ‘poker’ game of car sales and a source of energy that drives him from day-to-day and from race-to-race.
This is the story of a man who, says Juncadella, ‘knows perfectly what he wants and what he needs’ – and refuses to rest until he achieves it.
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