Bringing a new car to Le Mans is a tricky proposition. Bringing a new car to Le Mans, with limited testing, while also operating a full-scale IMSA program in the U.S. might just be madness. It’s only fitting that the larger than life state of Texas would produce a man capable of this madness: Ben Keating.

Keating Motorsports’ IMSA season has gotten off to a spectacular start. After scoring podiums in the first three rounds, including wins at the 12 Hours of Sebring and at Circuit of the Americas, the team leads the GTD Daytona point standings. That is in a Mercedes-AMG GT3, however, not the Riley Mk.30 Gibson the team has entered in the LMP2 category for Le Mans.

The No. 43 Riley Mk.30 only just hit the track for its first test in April at Road Atlanta—home to Petit Le Mans. Since then, the team has completed a limited test program, owing to its already busy IMSA schedule.

“It’s a new chassis and with all we have going on with GT Daytona in IMSA, there’s almost too much to be done and not enough time to do it,” Keating said. “We did some really good testing. We had a good shakedown at Road Atlanta and spent some time in New Orleans at NOLA Motorsports Park, and at Watkins Glen testing. You can have a car that feels so good and so fast when you’re out there by yourself, but you don’t know where you stand until you get here and get compared to all the other manufacturers. After the test day, the feeling was: we have a lot of work to do.”

Keating Motorsports is the sole Riley Mk.30 entered in this year’s 24 Hour of Le Mans. The team therefore has no other point of reference or comrades to share data with and gain insights from. This is a stark contrast to those teams running the ORECA chassis, which has 12 entries in the LMP2 class this year.

“We hope to be quicker, but right now I feel like we’re a little bit behind some of the other teams for several reasons; we didn’t have time to do a bunch of testing, we don’t have several races under our belt with the Riley and we’re the only Riley in the field. If you’re an ORECA team, you can share information and everyone gets quicker together. We’re by ourselves, so we have a lot to learn and not much time to learn it in.”

Regardless of pace, the Riley Motorsports team does win the prize for best dressed! Keating and co-drivers Jeroen Bleekemolen and Ricky Taylor are sporting driver suits made to look like tuxedos, complete with a printed on tie!

“The suits are fun,” Keating said. “I always wanted to do something like this. I thought there was no better place to do it than at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.”

When it comes to the future of Keating Motorsports and the Riley Mk.30, Keating is firmly focused on Le Mans.

“For right now, the long-term plan is to come back again next year!”