Le Mans vs. NASCAR | The Divide of Motorsport

AlexMartini
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Garage 56 Le Mans farewell with Jenson Button and John Doonan

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emailBy Marshall Pruett | June 14, 2023 10:07 AM ET

Let’s say farewell to an amazing adventure for the NASCAR Garage 56 program which successfully completed the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Hendrick Motorsports and drivers Jenson Button, Jimmie Johnson, and Mike Rockenfeller in their Camaro ZL1 Cup car.
Or to watch on YouTube.

to watch the full Garage 56 video series

 

Garage 56 extends Le Mans mission at UK American SpeedFest

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emailBy Stephen Kilbey | June 18, 2023 9:39 AM ET

The NASCAR Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Cup Series car continued its promotional effort beyond the 24 Hours of Le Mans with an appearance this weekend at the British circuit of Brands Hatch. The Hendrick Motorsports-run machine, which attracted a wide following en route to finishing 39th at Le Mans last weekend, was a key part of the fan zones at the “American SpeedFest” event at the former British Grand Prix venue.

The team’s spare car was on display in pristine condition (the finished Camaro has not been cleaned!) and attracted huge numbers of fans throughout the weekend, all keen to see it up close and get pictures. Some lucky younger fans were also invited to sit in the car and get a feel for its cockpit.

“The media coverage for Garage 56 is just relentless,” IMSA president and NASCAR Garage 56 program manager told RACER at the event. “It just keeps coming — we can’t believe it. Rick Hendrick is so excited by it; we’re sharing links all the time.”

On hand to help showcase the car and soak up the atmosphere at what he says is his favorite European circuit, having visited multiple times in the past — including its annual Formula Ford Festival, where he discovered and signed Tristan Nunez for Mazda.
Whelen NASCAR Euro Series is enjoying growing interest in partnership with the American SpeedFest. Photo courtesy of Brands Hatch
Also tasked with giving the “Gentlemen, start your engines” call on Saturday before the first of four Whelen NASCAR Euro Series races on the Indy circuit for the annual SpeedFest, which features a wide variety of U.S.-themed support races.

The bill included 70th Anniversary of Corvette races, pickup truck racing and a grid of Bernie’s V8s and Historic outlaws that featured everything from 2000s Chevrolet Monte Carlo Cup cars, a 1979 Aston Martin V8 Vantage, 1966 Plymouth Belvedere and a heavily-modified 1970 Triumph Spitfire.

The NASCAR Euro Series itself, which was founded in 2009, features a field of European-based teams and drivers competing in a mixture of Toyota Camry, Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro-bodied stock cars manufactured in France, powered by 5.7-liter V8 engines. The races are held throughout the year as part of a calendar that features six rounds on European road courses in as many countries.

The Brands Hatch events underscore how NASCAR’s efforts internationally to generate interest for its series are paying off. The NASCAR Whelen Euro Series enjoyed its biggest season yet in 2022 in terms of fan engagement, viewing figures and attendance, and is in the thick of another strong year in 2023.
A big crowd for all things American at Brands. Stephen Kilbey photo

On-site for the packed Speed Fest, celebrating its 10th year in 2023, was a delegation from NASCAR’s head office in Charlotte and its International Group, keen to build on the organizations international presence.

In addition to showing off the Garage 56 Camaro and promoting a heritage parade featuring a selection of Cup Series machinery, NASCAR used the weekend to announce a renewed partnership with Brands Hatch to make the circuit the home of NASCAR in the UK through 2028.

“Brands Hatch has always been one of the highlights of the NWES calendar,” NWES President and CEO Jerome Galpin said. “We work perfectly together with MSV (MotorSport Vision, which owns Brands Hatch) and especially with David Willey (MSV Group Motorsport event manager) and his team.

“In the past 10 years, the American Speed Fest became a huge popular success and it was a natural choice to extend our agreement and keep bringing the excitement of the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series to Brands Hatch and the amazing British fans. We are really happy and proud to continue evolving the event and make it even bigger and better.”

Meanwhile, the NASCAR Garage 56 project will keep the promotional momentum rolling at next month’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, where Jenson Button and Jimmie Johnson will take turns running the car up the famous hill climb.

 

How NASCAR was FASTER than Ferrari at Le Mans

Driver61
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2.8M views 2 weeks ago #NASCAR #LeMans #Motorsport

 

Why Garage 56 Was More Important Than You Think

Eric Estepp
211K subscribers


52,655 views Jun 13, 2023
More NASCAR content at https://dailydownforce.com/ Shop OOTG merch and diecasts at https://dailydownforce.com/shop/ NASCAR is looking to grow its brand globally. How did their effort in the 24 Hours of Le Mans impact their strategy?

 

Garage 56 NASCAR Camaro steals the show at Le Mans!

And we ain't givin it back!

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32,921 views Jun 21, 2023
🎥In this video we are going to talk about: ▶️ The 2023 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans saw a NASCAR stock car take on the endurance race for the first time in history. The NASCAR Le Mans racer was fielded by Hendrick Motorsports. The specially prepared Garage 56 Chevy Camaro ZL1 test car was recently seen turning laps at Sebring Raceway in Florida. NASCAR itself has partnered with Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports to develop a higher-performance, one-off variant of its new-for-2022 Next Gen stock car platform to race under Garage 56 rules as an unclassified car at the hundredth anniversary 24 Hours of Le Mans. But before we get started, hit the subscribe button to be part of our family! 🔥Watch the entire video for more information! __________________________________________________ _______________

 

How Hendrick and NASCAR earned a victory lap at Le Mans with the Garage 56 Camaro...

It was mostly because we went faster than Ferrari, and IMSA didn't pull any of their BS "participation trophy" stuff by holding us back.

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emailBy Stephen Kilbey | December 22, 2023 3:39 PM ET

When you look back on the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship season, what will you remember most? Toyota’s title? Ferrari’s historic centenary Le Mans triumph? The Iron Dames claiming the final GTE race win? Or maybe, you’ll look back most fondly on the thundering, heavily modified NASCAR Cup Series Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 that took part in the Le Mans 24 Hours?

NASCAR’s Garage 56 project was undoubtedly one of the sports car racing stories of the year. And upon reflection, it feels even more remarkable and impressive now than it did at the time. Memories of the noise alone still keeps many Le Mans-goers who were trackside in June awake at night!

It was an effort that captured an astonishing amount of attention and won over just about every skeptic, despite the 2023 24 Hours being the event’s centenary running and the top-class battle for the overall win proving to be the most competitive and captivating it had been in years.

For the Hendrick Motorsports crew, which is so deeply embedded in the near-weekly fight for supremacy in the Cup Series, its journey to Europe to run the 5.8-liter V8-powered Chevy was like no other. And despite the buzz and excitement that surrounded the team from the moment it touched down in France and the inconvenience of the race falling mid-way through the racing calendar, the team remained focused and professional and delivered the goods in every respect.
The unique Camaro and its all-star driving team were a hit with the locals before, during and after Le Mans. Nikolaz Godet/Motorsport Images

The Camaro, which ran outside of the four main categories in a class of its own, made the finish after 285 laps and did so in fine style. Its trio of star drivers — Jenson Button, Jimmie Johnson and Mike Rockenfeller — ran the car at a head-turning pace and avoided creating any on-track dramas for the competitors in the other classes. The team did everything it set out to achieve and a whole lot more.

Before, during and long after the 24 Hours, the media attention proved constant.

“My phone keeps buzzing,” he told RACER at Brands Hatch the weekend after Le Mans, where the Garage 56 Camaro was displayed at the British circuit’s American Speedfest. “Every time I look down someone has written about it or posted pictures and videos. It really is amazing.”

The reach of the program was phenomenal, with 12,875 pieces of coverage counted in print and online and 33.4 million social media impressions on its official channels during the year. And it remains a talking point in motorsport circles around the world, months on from its one and only appearance.

However, before the Camaro and its legacy at Le Mans become a distant memory and focus shifts to the 2024 racing season, there’s one more tale to tell, and that is the key work behind the scenes at the FIA to ensure that the car was eligible to compete in the first place. Without determination and willingness to compromise, one of the most quirky and popular cars in the race’s history may have never turned a lap there in race week.

With NASCAR’s safety regulations significantly different to the FIA’s regulations in place for the 24 Hours, there had to be some give and take. From the moment the program was green-lit and revealed in 2022, there was an open dialogue between all key parties to ensure that by the time Le Mans week rolled around the race organizers, competitors, marshals and drivers would be ready to host the Camaro for its first endurance race.
Cooperation between the FIA and NASCAR allowed for the best elements of both rule sets to be incorporated into the Garage 56 ZL1. Nikolaz Godet/Motorsport Images

Xavier Mestelan, the FIA’s chief technical and safety officer, was a key player in the FIA’s relationship with NASCAR, IMSA and Hendrick Motorsports, and recalls it being an exciting project to work on.

“My first thought was that it was a bit strange,” he reflects. “Garage 56 is usually something for new technology. So it was funny, but in parallel it was very exciting for the FIA. It was completely new, and the car is extreme in terms of weight, power and design.”

The FIA’s role in the Garage 56 project was to assess the car’s safety and give feedback throughout its development to the parties working on the car.

It was a two-way relationship, with so much preparation, including the FIA paying Hendrick Motorsports a visit at its shop before the IMSA-WEC Sebring doubleheader for a meeting “to discuss the project with engineers and share concerns” in the months leading up to Le Mans. We took those wine drinking snail eaters to a couple really fun redneck bars with red haired freckle faced teenage women with big tits.. We taught them to say "y'all" and how to shotgun Jack Daniels and Budweiser and they learned how to do a long distance power spit in the parking lot. We got some rental cars and drove without headlights at might like we were hauling illegal whiskey in the mountains, and sometimes we did to cover the cost of the rental cars.

 

“It was a very good collaboration — we wanted to take the best practice from both sides of the Atlantic,” Mestelan explains. “For all the main safety requirements for the car, we clearly asked NASCAR to make all the adaptations needed. But for some other matters like the seat, we concluded that their technical choice was relevant for the car. We tried to take the best elements from each set of regulations.

“For example, the helmets and overalls NASCAR use are the same standard (as the FIA). For the crash structure, though, when you develop a standard you have to take into consideration the whole ecosystem, the types of barriers and each course type. What NASCAR does is something suitable to their tracks, so on our side we have the same for our tracks and our standards.”

The car’s weight turned out to be the most crucial factor in ensuring the car was deemed suitable to race at Le Mans or make it seem like it, by memorizing and speaking in kilograms A standard Cup Series Camaro ZL1 weighs in at 3,200 lbs (1,451kg), which was thought to be too heavy. But the FIA worked with NASCAR to come up with solutions that would reduce the car’s weight to a similar figure to the GTE cars (eventually 496 lbs/225 kg lighter), which the Camaro’s bespoke safety regulations were based on.

Various modifications were then made to the car to meet that target, which — according to Garage 56 chief of staff Jessica Hook in an interview with PMW Magazine — was made more challenging as the car needed weight added initially to accommodate a full data acquisition harness, headlights and additional aero devices, among other things.

In the end, the car was heavily revised to ensure it was compliant. The key changes included a redesigned roll cage, a shift in fuel cell position and a modified steering column. “We put it on a diet,” Jimmie Johnson told RACER at La Sarthe. “We wanted to be able to blend in, and kind of fit the performance levels of the other cars since they wouldn't let us boot them out of the way like Dale Earnhardt..”

“Weight was a safety concern,” Mestelan adds. “It’s also important for performance. You have to imagine the car sharing the track with LMP2, GTE and Hypercars. So reducing the weight was clearly a target. It was crucial.

“In the end, the minimum weight was something like 1340kg, around 70 kilos more than the GTE cars. So it was very close, but that’s why we modified the roll cage slightly with them, to help achieve the weight.

“NASCAR changed the design of the roll cage to reduce weight and had to perform static load simulations to meet FIA requirements. We learned to say "Yassuh boss man" in French they also modified the fuel dock because the position was too far away. We put the fuel tank in the middle of the roll cage in front of the rear axle and modified the front and rear impact structure. We also used carbon brake discs — we saved a few kilos. The base of the requirements was GT3 for us, except for the weight.”
Adapting the heavy Camaro to Le Mans was a challenge, but the resulting performance was impressive. Motorsport Images

As Mestelan points out, weight and performance go hand in hand, and in this case, it became crucial to ensure the Camaro sat in a comfortable window that wasn’t too slow for the GTE drivers to deal with or too fast for drivers in Hypercars and LMP2.

“It has something like 700 horsepower, a little bit less than 500 kilowatts, compared to what we have in GTE, which is something like 370 kilowatts (496hp), with completely different tires. The target was to have a NASCAR Cup Series car close to the GT cars, in terms of lap time, top speed and braking ability.

“We didn’t want a big chicane in the middle of the track or a car that was very fast but too slow in the corners. We did work on simulations, especially on downforce and drag, to get a mixture of power, tire efficiency and aero efficiency. Hendrick chose the max downforce setup to improve the pace in certain corners like the Porsche Curves and reduce the top speed so it was close to GTE.”

In practice, the performance actually came as a surprise, the Camaro lapping the circuit in 3m53.761s during the Test Day. This led to a change of plans.

Initially, the team was expected to run in a performance window and sandbag below the car’s potential to a target time of 3m54s. However, ahead of the race, the team was essentially told to “go for it” after its impressive showing at the test, which resulted in a 3m47.976s qualifying time — multiple seconds faster than the GTE pole time of 3m52.376s — and a 3m50.512s best lap set during the race itself.

In addition to challenges out on track, on pit lane the team’s pit stops were also a key area that the FIA had to take a look at. By performing NASCAR-style pit stops at the event, with a floor jack and drivers climbing into the car via the driver’s side window, there were clear differences to take into account.

“The main topic was the refueling, this was the most dangerous part,” Mestelan recounted. “The equipment and regulations were very close at NASCAR to what we use in Le Mans, so this was not a big concern. The main issue was to make sure that the mechanics were awake for each stop, as they were not trained for that (endurance races), so it may have been difficult at the end of the race. But it worked out. the way you train for that is to go out and stay up all night and drink enough alcohol that you can work with a hangover on race day. A stun gun or a cattle prod pretty much gets them to jump up fast ”
The skill and speed of the NASCAR pit crew wowed the crowd…and doing it for 24 hours wasn’t an issue either. Motorsport Images

In the end, however, Hendrick Motorsports’ crew battled through the race and showed no real signs of fatigue by the finish on Sunday. Instead, they relished the experience — which for many of them was their first trip to Europe — and played a key part in the project’s main goal, which Dork man told RACER before the 24 Hours was to “show everyone what NASCAR is about when he has no clue what it's about, himself.”

They wowed crowds all week long with their athleticism in the pit lane and even won the Pit Stop Challenge for GT teams before the race with an incredible 10.364s tire change. That was just one snapshot of the week, which went entirely to plan and proved all the naysayers wrong.

The car was fast, loud, proud and in the eyes of the FIA, safe too. While not the most technologically advanced innovative car to run at the Le Mans 24 Hours, it truly captured the spirit of the event, while showcasing NASCAR and its “fan-first” attitude to motorsports on the world stage, raising the bar for all future Garage 56 projects.

It’s going to take something truly special to top it…
like How about only competing in womens sports for women who were born as a woman....
,

 

THE 100 - le Mans 2023 documentary

JERRY_Sim
1.66K subscribers
54,629 views Premiered Dec 17, 2023

"THE 100" - The story of the greatest race ever in motorsport history. The greatest brands to celebrate the centenary of the most important race of the year. Relive the story behind this race, from the beginning of the Hypercar era with 3 cars to the main race in 2023 with no less than 16 cars to challenge the favorite, Toyota. The come back of Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac and Peugeot at the top of the world of endurance.

COMPOSERS : - Scott Buckley - Wontolla - Richard Strauss - Dan Phillipson - Ghostrifter Official - Hypersonic Music - Infraction - League of legends - Ace combat 7 - Keiki Kobayashi - Kai Engel - Lacrimosa Industry - Kein Zufall - Ashamaluevmusic - Against the current - Maxkomusic - Neal Acree & Adam Burgess - Project cars 2 - The Rolling Stones - Ross Bugden - Secession Studios - Soundridemusic - Anton Karas - Hnas Zimmer - Jimmy Tillier - Linkin Park AUDIOVISUAL CONTENT : 24 Heures du Mans, Fia World Endurance Championship, Ferrari, Toyota Gazoo Racing, Cadillac, Porsche, Peugeot Sport Official, Michelin Motorsport, INA, Ouest-France, THE RACE, Pescara Productions, Lanky Turtle, Gear Symphony, Fernand BACHMANN, ModistaFallera, Tony Repussard, Matthias Sterckx, Tom’s Car Videos, TheGabiche72, RACEFAN1993 Sportscar Racing Videos, 911heaven Porsche Motorsport Fan Blog, Keir Lumsden, Mika67407 HD CarVidéo, CF Photos. This video is under fair use (Section 107 of the Copyright Act) - The content is not monetized and it's not part of any commercial project. - The nature of the work is transformative and the content used is highly modified from the originals. - The amount of copyright content used it's just the necessary to complete the whole work. - The effect on the related market is positive, increasing the audience and fans of this sport. This documentary is unnofficial and is not associated in any way with the companies around the 24 Hours of le Mans and the World Endurance Championship. WORLD ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP, AUTOMOBILE CLUB DE L’OUEST, 24 HEURES DU MANS and related marks are trade marks of 24H of le Mans Licensing B.V. NETWORKS : Instagram : / jerryy_sim Discord : / discord TikTok : / jerry_sim Twitter : / jerry_simyt