NASCAR will be at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, so get your ticket and an American flag shirt. The combination is more normal than it seems. Le Mans is a world-famous endurance race where American sports car teams have been fighting for glory on the Mulsanne straight for a long time, but NASCAR has only raced once. The Garage 56 program started in 2012 as a display class to support technical innovation and invites the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) to Le Mans annually. Only two G56 teams from the second group ever finished the event. These teams used different fuels or had cockpits made for drivers with disabilities. The ACO wants NASCAR to race in Garage 56 in 2023 so that Europe can feel how loud V-8 NASCAR is. NASCAR races take place on road courses, but endurance racing has its own rules and obstacles. This means more than bringing over a Cup Series car will be required. NASCAR sent the most successful team in NASCAR’s top class, Hendrick Motorsports, to France. This year, the G56 entry will be a modified Camaro ZL1 Cup Car made for the long race schedule and brutal conditions at Le Mans. “We had to change it to make it an endurance vehicle,” said Brandon Thomas, vice president of vehicle design. Still, it feels like a Cup car. See how NASCAR changed the Camaro stock car for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the picture gallery. A party for the 200th birthday In 1976, when gas was expensive, and track attendance was low, the ACO asked NASCAR to send two of its big V-8-powered cars to Le Mans to race against Porsches and prototypes. The Ford Torino and the Dodge Charger made the trip, but neither of them made it through the 24 hours. An important 56 Nissan released the strange-looking Deltawing in 2012, the first year of the G56. The car had no wings, was oddly shaped, had a narrow front track, and almost all its downforce came from its diffuser. It could run on a smaller amount of gas and fewer tires. It was an experiment in physics and making things lighter. It weighed just over 1,000 pounds and quickly hit the speed required by the ACO (between prototype and GT races). It reached its goal, getting 8.8 mpg at race speed, but had to quit after hitting a wall on lap 76. That would be amazing compared to a car that gets 100 mpg on the highway.
