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The 100th running of the World Endurance Championship’s 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race takes place Saturday in France, where NASCAR has turned into one of the stars of the show. The Daytona Beach-based property worked with its most winning team ever, Hendrick Motorsports, and Chevrolet to enter its seventh-generation stock car in the race, in a bid to grow its international popularity. It’s the first time since 1976 that a NASCAR vehicle will be in the race, and since the week-long event started last Sunday, the car has been getting a significant amount of attention from sports car media and fans.
The Camaro is entered as part of the race’s “Garage 56” position, which allows for one vehicle to be entered each year as an “innovative car” that is not competing for finishing position and is instead designed to highlight the technological development of the automobile industry. In this case, it’s NASCAR’s most technologically advanced car ever and one that allows for hybrid engine technology for the first time. It’s getting attention because of the way it looks big and sounds throaty compared to the more diminutive and high-pitched sports cars.
NASCAR execs like Chair & CEO Jim France and HMS owner Rick Hendrick are among those in France for the weekend, and the HMS pit crew also won a pit crew challenge earlier this week. Hendrick told The AP: “Just to see the reaction from the crowd, people are so excited about this car. My granddaughter has been sending me all these TikTok things that fans are making about NASCAR being at Le Mans.” France is the one who set the venture up originally via his deep connections in auto racing. The race airs on the Warner Bros. Discovery channel MotorTrend in the U.S.
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Meanwhile, Chevrolet will manufacture 56 Camaro ZL1 Garage 56 special edition road cars for sale to the general public, though it’s not releasing the listing price yet. Chevy says the cars will be available later this year and one of them was shown off publicly for the first time Thursday during a press conference at the track. The 650-horsepower car has a “riptide blue” exterior color, thin gold and white stripe graphics running from the hood to the rear decklid, a NASCAR 75th anniversary logo graphic on the hood and a Garage 56 badge on the front fenders, replacing the normal Camaro badging. There’s an HMS logo and Garage 56 emblems on the floormats and steering wheel. There will also be additional graphics that the buyers can put on their car if they want: a NASCAR windshield header decal, a Goodyear front wheel arch decal and door decals with the No. 24, which is the number being used in Saturday’s race. The car will be made at GM’s Lansing Grand River Assembly plant in Michigan.
NASCAR at the 24 Hours of Le Mans
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