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#6080 - 05/26/23 05:02 PM June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race  
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One week from Friday, NASCAR’s long-awaited, highly collaborative Garage 56 project will formally make its 24 Hours of Le Mans debut in France the No. 24 Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 presented for inspection at the Place de la Republique in the center of town, the world center of sports car racing for the week.

The 62 cars entered for the renowned twice-around-the-clock Le Mans race, as well as their 186 drivers, must go through a series of “administrative and technical checks” called “scrutineering” in advance of the first practice session at the 8.467-mile Circuit de le Sarthe on Sunday, June 4.

The inspection is both a technical once-over and in so many ways a grand showcase.

The Garage 56 Chevrolet a coordinated effort among NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports, Chevrolet, Goodyear and IMSA was shipped to France on May 18 and is scheduled to take its formal turn at inspection next Friday morning at 11:15 a.m. ET; the only entry in the race’s “Innovative Car” class. The next day, it will join seven other cars in a famed parade through Le Mans from the Avenue Charles de Gaulle and ultimately through the Wilbur Wright tunnel in front of tens of thousands of fans descending on the small, French inland town for the 24-hour race.

Seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson is headlining a stellar group of drivers for the Garage 56 entry that also includes sports car great and former Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller, Formula One champion Jenson Button and multi-time IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series champion Jordan Taylor in a reserve role.

While his teammates have all competed in Le Mans previously, this will be Johnson’s debut in the June 10-11 race, which is celebrating 100 years on the racing calendar. The popular NASCAR champion will be competing for his own Legacy Motor Club team in the NASCAR Cup Series’ Coca-Cola 600 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Sunday and then leaves immediately for Paris, where he will undergo a sort of “rookie orientation” the next day.

After all the testing, preparing and anticipating, Johnson is now simply eager to get to Europe for the actual race week, with its 100th-anniversary pomp and the high-level international competition.

“It’s hard to believe it’s almost here, we’ve been preparing for so long,” Johnson said this week. “I’m excited to get there and to take in absolutely every second of this incredible opportunity. I’ve been a part of many really amazing things in my career. This is going to be on to be one of the top five.

“I am so happy I can take my family with me to Le Mans. We are all looking forward to this extremely prestigious race and taking everything in.
Can’t say enough about the preparation that has gone into this by everyone at NASCAR and Hendrick Motorsports.

“I’m focusing on the 600 [this Sunday], but it’s hard not to have that excitement knowing we leave in a few days.”

The last test for the No. 24 Next Gen Chevrolet came at Sebring in April under the watchful eyes of NASCAR chairman Jim France, Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick, IMSA president John Doonan and longtime NASCAR executive Mike Helton all of whom will be in Le Mans next week.

“We went from testing and development to tuning, and now it’s getting into execution mode,” said IMSA’s Doonan. “This all started with a vision from Jim [France] and putting all the best partners that NASCAR has together, the winningest team, winningest manufacturer, tire partner since 1954 and had all those pillars aligned and wanted to put NASCAR on a global stage and because of our relationship IMSA has with the ACO, it all fit together.

“For me, I’m a big historian of the sport and to look back at what Jim’s dad had a vision of trying to align NASCAR was coming on strong in the south, and he wasn’t satisfied yet, he felt it deserved more international notoriety,” Doonan continued. “He did that [with a Le Mans entry] in 1976 and then to recreate it now, you have a passionate fan group over there that I think will appreciate NASCAR, the sound, the pit stops, all of that.

“And I think we have a group of passionate NASCAR fans here that may now look at IMSA and the international sports car property a little differently and be able to root on their NASCAR entry.”



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#6085 - 06/06/23 07:19 AM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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LE MANS, France — Jimmie Johnson’s two-week engagement of fulfilling his childhood dreams is already off to a rollicking start.
He shared his memories during a Q&A with French media during Friday’s scrutineering session ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans (June 10-11), describing seeing the unique Le Mans-style starting procedures from years gone by.

“As a young boy watching racing with my father, he would show me this race where drivers would line up on the opposite side of the racetrack, run across the track and get in their cars to drive off. And as a kid, I said, ‘I need to do this. I’ve got to do that someday.’ I grew up with racing in my family and very much a part of it. I’ve always loved sports car racing, spent some time racing in IMSA over the years, been in a few Rolex 24s, so I feel like this day has been coming.”

Johnson added a chapter Saturday to what’s already been a legendary week, driving the Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 through the streets of the city during the race’s centenary post-scrutineering parade, one week before the start of the French endurance racing classic. Throngs of fans lined the parade route, which began near the Place de la République square, and rolled past the hulking Cathedral of Saint Julian of Le Mans before ending through Tunnel Wilbur-Wright. The No. 24 Chevy was the anchor for the exclusive eight-car procession.

It’s still just the first weekend in Le Mans, but the vibrant buzz around the race and the embrace of the American stock-car visitors have been palpable.
“It was just an all-new experience, but really cool to see the fans continue to show up day after day,” Johnson said, taking in the sights under the historic arches near the medieval section of old town Le Mans. “They had to be five or six deep along the parade route, which was really impressive.
And then a photo, I’ve seen this (tunnel) photo before. So now it all makes sense to me to be here and to have our car be a part of it, it’s really cool.”

The No. 24 Chevrolet will make its first on-track laps Sunday at the 8.467-mile Circuit de la Sarthe for the opening test sessions. It’s a moment that Johnson’s been waiting for since he was originally confirmed to the driver lineup along with fellow veterans Jenson Button and Mike Rockenfeller back in January at IMSA’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

His arrival in France was delayed by dreadful weather during the NASCAR Cup Series’ most recent race weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, an occurrence that pushed back his rookie orientation. He underwent three hours-plus of multistage simulation work at AOTech outside Paris, which provided him with driving experiences in the rain, dry, night and day under the supervision of race organizers Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO).
The simulator company stayed open later to accommodate the shift in schedules.

“It really worked out well,” Johnson said. “The ACO was able to create some time for me to get the simulator. I personally ended up here very early, except for the simulator that I was in on Wednesday, so they let me stay late after they closed and right and got in my (sim) hours and worked through some of the procedures that take place on the track.
I’ve been here a couple of days early. I was ahead of all these guys, just kind of hanging out and getting acclimated and ready.”
One day later for the simulation and orientation, but one day closer to the car’s on-track debut at Le Mans.

“He would have had a little bit more rest in between the simulator time and Charlotte, but he did what he needed to do. He got here,” said Chad Knaus, Hendrick Motorsports’ VP of Competition and his longtime collaborator in his days as a Cup Series crew chief. “He’s a little sleep-deprived, but as soon as he landed, he went straight to the simulator and used it for about three hours.
Did a great job, so really, really happy that he did that, and he even said it was beneficial, so that was good.


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#6086 - 06/06/23 02:39 PM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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If the weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans is as competitive as Tuesday’s Pit Stop Challenge at the Circuit de la Sarthe, fans will be in for an impressive race.
To the delight of the French crowd, the No. 93 Peugeot TotalEnergies car won overall, its stop of 10.067s edging Toyota Gazoo Racing by 0.206s. But the loudest cheers were for the Garage 56 project’s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet crew, who in their Le Mans debut were fifth-fastest overall out of 62 cars and tops among the GTE entries.

“These guys have been training hard,” said Chad Knaus, Hendrick Motorsports’ vice president of competition and manager of the Garage 56 project.
“What’s amazing is everybody’s been doing this [pit stop preparation] along with what they’re trying to do as a real job seven days a week.

“They’ve been training really hard as well as pitting Xfinity cars and NASCAR Cup Series cars and doing this, which is significantly different choreography on significantly different race cars.
They’ve done a superb job, and I’m super proud of them.”

A lot of the Garage 56 pit crew are first- and second-year members of the championship Hendrick Motorsports team, according to Knaus.
A few others have more experience, and all of them have been training specifically for Le Mans, working the tests leading up to this weekend’s race.
“We picked all these guys and have been training with them for eight months,” Knaus said. “They’ve been working hard on this.”

A crew that included coach Evan Kureczka, Dawson Backus (front tire changer), Mike Moss (rear tire changer), Cody French (front tire carrier), Jarius Morehead (rear tire carrier) and Donovan Williams (jack man) got a chance to set the tone for the team.

“It’s amazing, just to think about all the hard work we’ve done and the guys in the shop, they started even way before us putting this project in place the last nine months,” Williams said after the champagne-drenched victory celebration.

“It’s just a special moment to be able to represent Hendrick, represent our families, ourselves and the organization, America and NASCAR as a whole.”

Also
Goodyear has introduced a racing tire with the first real-time intelligence capability to record tire pressure and temperature, which are outfitted on the NASCAR Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.
A passive, non-battery sensor is cured into the tire during production that provides real-time tire data to Hendrick Motorsports.


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#6092 - 06/07/23 07:33 PM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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Not only did the garage 56 Camaro whip C8.R in the pit stop challenge

But also ran faster times in practice and qualify

Attached Files wecp2.jpgwecq.jpg

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#6093 - 06/08/23 07:43 AM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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Mike Rockenfeller was “not super surprised” by the pace displayed from the NASCAR Garage 56 car in early running ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, saying he “knew what to expect” after months of development work.

Rockenfeller steered the No. 24 NASCAR Next Gen Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 to a best lap of 3:47.976 in qualifying on Wednesday.
The German’s time compared strongly to the quickest lap in GTE-Am set by Alessio Rovera, with Rockenfeller nearly four seconds quicker than the Italian’s No. 83 Richard Mille AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.

The two-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner spoke positively about the car, noting it was “super cool” and “fun to drive” around the Circuit de la Sarthe.
“It’s big, it’s mean, it’s powerful, it’s noisy,” Rockenfeller said.
“It’s very nice in terms of the window. It’s not like it’s super edgy to drive.
“Yes, there are some spots where we maybe struggle more than a GT car. They were always afraid we were too slow in the Porsche [Curves].
“We are actually not. We’re pretty fast. Honestly, the car is just super cool. It’s fun to drive.”

Rockenfeller explained the speed shown by the car thus far was along the lines of expectations devised during the development process.
He admitted that the data provided by simulator work was “a bit too optimistic” when it came to lap times.
“I’m not super surprised, to be honest, because I’ve worked closely with it all the time,” Rockenfeller explained.

“Working with the engineers, working on the sim, driving it. So I knew kind of what to expect. Maybe we were not sure, because the sim is the sim, right?
“We don’t know the exact track model and how the grip is. So you always have a little bit of uncertainty, but overall, you don’t know the last two seconds on a track like that if you haven’t been with the car on the track.

“For the GTE teams, it’s way easier. They’ve been here year after year, so they know everything. For us, there were a lot of areas where we were not exactly sure.
“But of course we were always correlating the American tracks in testing to American tracks on the simulator. Sebring, Austin, whatever.
“So we got the model very close. I can say in the sim I was like doing 3:49. So we knew then if we take the fuel out, which we never did, that we could get there. I’m very happy.

“I was always kind of pessimistic in a way, pushing the team as hard as I could to improve.
“I never said it’s good, and we can relax, because our goal was to be in the area where we are and to be close to the GTs in terms of lap time.
“I think we achieved that, because for sure in qualifying the gap is bigger than in the race.

“We really trimmed it out for one lap for qualifying, which I think we did more of a step than the others do, usually.”
Rockenfeller “Pretty Confident” about Reliability

Rockenfeller feels upbeat about the car’s reliability, noting that the car has so far proven strong throughout testing.
“In Le Mans you expect the unexpected kind of,” he said. “I’m sure there will be problems we have to overcome, but that’s normal in a race like that.
“I’m not very concerned. You never know, but there was nothing popping up in all the testing where we should be concerned.”

He said the car generally had positive handling characteristics across the circuit, although some areas provide difficulties.
“The areas where we struggle maybe a little bit more is, for example, the last chicane,” Rockenfeller said.
“It’s a fast change of direction, and you really want to throw it from one side to the other.

“There, you feel the weight the little bit. That’s the tricky part, I would say.
“Maybe a little bit, the very late braking into a corner with steering. It’s maybe a bit easy to lock the front.

“That’s a little bit, I would say, where you have to be a bit careful, but any car is on the edge and there are a few areas where you struggle more than others.
“But I would say that is it. The rest are just fine, and it suits pretty well. We are pretty good on the straights, we’re pretty good under braking.
“Straight line braking I feel quite confident.
We can’t be that bad if we’re four seconds quicker than a GTE car.”

Attached Files 56.jpg

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#6094 - 06/08/23 08:29 AM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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Listen to the exhaust of this Camaro
Turn UP the volume !




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#6099 - 06/08/23 08:47 PM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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The Hendrick Motorsports machine was almost four seconds faster than the quickest GTE Am entry in Wednesday's opening qualifying session, despite the team's modest pre-event public predictions of being somewhere in the middle of the GTE Am pack.

Instead, 2010 Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller posted a 3m47.976s lap that was only 8.5s slower than the lowest-ranked of the LMP2s.
"I think we've progressed a lot and here we are qualifying four seconds quicker than all the GTE cars, I think it's a phenomenal effort by the whole team," said Button.
"We came here thinking we'd be in the mix and, when the GTE cars get the amateur drivers in the car, we'd be able to be as quick as them if not quicker, but we didn't expect to qualify four seconds in front of the quickest GTE car.

"Everything has been spot on, all the homework that's been done by this team has been phenomenal, and I would put it up there with one of the best teams I've raced with in the world."
Rockenfeller said fast lap times had been simulated before arriving at Le Mans, but he still feels the qualifying performance was better than expected.
"When we started with the Cup car we felt there's so much potential, and then we tweaked it and got faster and faster at Le Mans on the sim, but you never know until you hit the real track," he said.

"To be here now, having qualifying done faster than we expected on the sim, everybody can be so proud - so far we have overachieved."
However, Button has cautioned that finishing ahead of the GTE Am runners will likely be more difficult in the race.

He explained that multiple factors, including possible rain showers predicted for this weekend's event, are likely to contribute to a closer contest.
"We'll have to change brakes during the race, which takes us five minutes for the other guys it's one minute so that's over a lap," added Button.

"The goal has to be to beat the GTs. First of all to finish, and then to finish in front of the GTs. And, if we can do that, it's a great achievement."
The 2009 F1 champion, whose only previous Le Mans outing came in 2018 with SMP Racing with a BR Engineering BR1, also stated how much he was enjoying driving the NASCAR machine.

"I love the sound, I love the look, I love the challenge and this is a real challenge, to take a Cup car base and to build it into something as quick as Hendrick Motorsport have is really impressive," he said.


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#6103 - 06/09/23 06:09 PM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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#6104 - 06/09/23 07:33 PM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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Let's Go a Racing, Boys

Race starts 10 AM ET Saturday for 24 hours

Good luck to Caddy, Camaro and C8.Rs

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#6108 - 06/10/23 07:09 PM Re: June 10th Le Mans & Garage 56 Ready to Race [Re: teamzr1]  
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10 p.m.: Halfway home in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Mike Rockenfeller still making time here, with 141 laps 1,193.847 miles on the board for the Garage 56 No. 24 Chevrolet team. The No. 51 Ferrari AF Corse team has cycled back to the overall lead at the race’s midpoint, and the No. 30 Duqueine Team Oreca (LMP2) and the Project 1-AO “Rexy” Porsche 911 RSR (LM GTE Am) are the other class leaders.

Barely a minute past halfway, Jenson Button has returned to the Garage 56 seat.

9:30 p.m.: Quick pit stop for the Garage 56 No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports car, which is closing in on a driver change to put Jenson Button back in the seat to get the team to dawn. That’s 132 laps on the chart, 1,126.111 miles complete, and 36th place in the order.

Big developments in the most recent moments, as the overall leader the No. 94 Peugeot sustained serious front-end damage with a shunt in the first Mulsanne chicane’s tire barrier. That briefly handed the overall lead to the No. 8 Toyota Gazoo Racing team in the Hypercar class. Other class leaders nearing the halfway mark are the No. 30 Duqueine Team Oreca (LMP2) and the Kessel Racing No. 57 Ferrari (LM GTE Am).

8:30 p.m.: That’s now 119 laps on the board for the Garage 56 No. 24 Chevy, which puts it over the 1,000-mile plateau 1,007.573 miles, to be more precise. Rockenfeller clocked a lap of 3 minutes, 51.881 seconds last time by, and the car is shown 38th in the running order with 13 1/2 hours to go.

7:47 p.m.: The No. 24 Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 has completed 111 laps 939.837 miles. After his last stint, Jimmie Johnson said that the team was caught by a safety car deployment, losing a lap in the process. Still, the car is shown in 36th place in the overall 62-car field, as we’re currently under a full-course yellow.

Camaro still has a higher overall standing over the C8.R after 12 hours


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