The SRT Viper program has its latest full-season driver, and it's a big name. Tommy Kendall comes out of semi-retirement to complete the rostrum of four full-time drivers for the races Viper chooses to run this season.
Kendall announced the move on SPEED's “Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain” on Sunday night. He'd teased the move on his Twitter account earlier in the night:
“Possibilities on my big news: 1) New TV show 2) embarking on US tour w/ @El_Gallo1 (BELOW, RIGHT) for a run for White House 3) coming out of retirement,” Kendall tweeted roughly an hour before show time.
Once the cameras started rolling, Kendall made the announcement.
“I went out on a high [in 1997] and my big-time professional career ended,” Kendall said on Wind Tunnel. “I had been asked a lot of when I was coming back and I wasn't really sure if that day was ever going to come. And then I got a call out of the blue about six weeks ago that took me to a drivers shootout. I said, ‘What the heck? Let's do it.”
Kendall joins Kuno Wittmer, Marc Goossens and Dominik Farnbacher in the Viper stable, with Ryan Hunter-Reay racing at Petit Le Mans.
His 1997 Trans-Am championship season featured a record 11 wins, and he also ran a Jaguar in 2004, the year before Klaus Graf, now of Muscle Milk Pickett Racing, won the 2005 title.