Garage 56 – Syndication Server

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

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 …

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. IMSA President John Doonan (who managed the team and program) admitted that he was almost overwhelmed by it.

“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.

“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 do 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. 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.”

“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. 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 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 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 Doonan told RACER before the 24 Hours was to “show everyone what NASCAR is about.”

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…

How racers are simulating their way to success

As costs continue to rise and prying eyes aim to peek at any advantage they can see a rival working on, simulation is becoming an increasingly vital tool in motorsport. Its advantages for drivers — giving them near endless seat time ahead of events to learn tracks, cars, and procedures – are obvious, but simulation has a much wider use aside from letting people log laps.

NASCAR’s Next Gen car, now in its second season, was of course the product of countless real-world laps at a number of tracks, both on and off the Cup Series schedule. But while it was turning laps on track in late 2019 and early 2020, Landon Cassill was turning laps in the virtual world. Simulation has been a key component of NASCAR for over a decade now, with Cassill describing it as “absolutely fundamental.”

“The simulators are running all day, every day,” he tells RACER. “The only teams that aren’t using simulators at a large scale are the teams that aren’t factory backed or manufacturer supported. The largest teams like Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart-Haas, those guys are probably in the simulator every single day. Maybe it’s not every driver every day and every team every day, but there’s probably some sort of team representation in that simulator seemingly every day.”

Such reliance on simulation is far from unique. Virtually — if you’ll pardon the pun — every series does it with track testing either outlawed or deemed too expensive to do on a regular basis.

For Landon Cassill, plugging into a simulator yields valuable seat time as a driver along with the vital data for the teams and manufacturers. Motorsport Images

“There’s been an evolution from on-track testing, which is really the best way to test a car but not necessarily the most efficient or cost-effective way,” says Cassill. “Racing series years ago put limitations around testing in an effort to control the costs that were spent on R&D, but if that money’s there, it’s going to get spent and smart people find a way to work around it, so that’s where simulation was created.

“But even before we were driving driver-in-loop simulators, the teams and manufacturers were building their cars and building their setups in simulation programs,” explains Cassill, who first tested with Chevrolet in the early 2010s. “Essentially (they were) preparing a virtual version of their race car and evaluating the potential data of that car before they ever put those setups underneath the real car. So NASCAR’s been pretty far along for a decade when it comes to engineering and simulation.”

It’s not all about cost-saving and efficiency, though. In series where regulations are tightly policed, simulation gives the opportunity to find sneaky advantages.

“In our sport, our cars are intended to look the same,” Cassill notes, “and so we don’t have the visual control of a wing of change or an underbody change that F1 has, where you can see those changes right in front of you and it’s easy to talk about. The teams have no choice but to talk about them or, or acknowledge them. As proprietary as the technology is, they can’t avoid it.

“In NASCAR — unfortunately for the sport, in my opinion, and for the fans — the teams are able to hide a lot of their technology around this stock body. And for years and years, there’s a lot of ingenuity that doesn’t get talked about because we don’t have to talk about it.”

NASCAR sampled Le Mans virtually before the Hendrick Motorsports Garage 56 Camaro took to the real track. Nikolaz Godet/Motorsport Images

The incognito nature of simulation also came in pretty handy for NASCAR’s recent foray at Le Mans. Before the Garage 56 project even got off the ground, Cassill may have — unknowingly, at the time — laid some of the groundwork while helping develop the Next Gen in its early days, as he divulged on Twitter back in June.

“I got a call from NASCAR — I’ve been in the sport for a long time and know a lot of the guys in the R&D center — and so got a call from them to come do a test, which to me wasn’t too unusual and I was happy to help with the Next Gen,” he explains. “They had a couple things that they were working through that I had known about, just being a full-time Cup driver at the time. I had known that they were testing and solving and developing that car to get it ready for us to race in the Cup Series.

“So nothing was too unusual for me, but they did ask me not to share much of the test plan when they sent it to me and showed me what we were doing — and the fact that we had Le Mans and the Daytona road course on the test plans. They had asked me to be prepared to run laps at Le Mans.”

For Le Mans, a baseline was needed. That was done with the help of iRacing laps in a Mercedes-AMG GT3 racer, and the previous generation of Cup Series car.

“It wasn’t super in-depth — it’s not like we were really turning big knobs, but they wanted to see a baseline of where we are at on this car at Le Mans. I wouldn’t say at the time that I had any specific knowledge or indication to myself that this was a potential Garage 56 entry and from that point on, I didn’t think much of it, to be honest with you.”

In fact, despite what NASCAR’s interest in Le Mans would develop into over the next three years, the simulator laps on Daytona’s road course drew Cassill’s attention more.

“I was, at the time, more interested in the fact that I ran laps on the Daytona road course as well because, being a current NASCAR driver, Le Mans seemed so far out there,” he says. “To me, I was more thinking, ‘Oh man, I’m probably going to end up racing at the Daytona road course’ and I hadn’t heard anybody talk about it. Obviously, that came into fruition pretty quickly because the Cup Series raced at the Daytona road course in short order after that.

“So the Le Mans thing wasn’t even really on my radar in the immediate future, other than I thought it was very exploratory. It didn’t feel random — I did feel like there was a purpose that NASCAR wanted to see some data of that car at Le Mans, how fast did it go down the straightaway and what the lap time looked like, the braking zones and what a general lap data would look like. So I knew there was a purpose. I just didn’t put too much thought into it like, ‘Oh, this thing might actually race.’

The on-track benefits of simulation to prepare cars and drivers might be relatively new, but the reasons for it are apparent. But now we’re also seeing engineers get their start in the virtual world as well.

“I’d say it’s happening a lot,” says Prescott Campell, an Oxford Brookes University student currently working as a structural engineer at the Williams F1 team, but who is also an engineer for Williams’ Esports division. “A lot of the other students I study with work part-time as engineers for various Esports teams, and they develop these skills that you don’t really learn during university — how to set up a race strategy, that’s not really a course that’s taught.

“So they can build these skills by being engineers for Esports teams and the software that’s used to analyze data is the exact same software that’s used in real life, so you get familiar with software that they need to use to get a job after graduating.”

Williams has found useful synergy between the engineering requirements of real world motorsport and Esports, which can help prepare young engineers for racing. Zak Mauger/Motorsport Images

The idea of an “engineer” in a virtual world might seem baffling at first but, as with driver and car prep, the reasons behind it are straightforward.

“With anything that’s extremely competitive, you need as many tools and people on the case as possible to efficiently find every advantage you can,” says Campbell. “It’s possible, but it requires a lot of work for a driver to converge on setups and they might not have the skills to use the software and the tools available in order to exploit these advantages that they might never come across.

“So it takes an engineer that has experience with data analysis and the tools they need to extract data from the driver running, then sweep through it, working with the driver — who might also pick up things that the engineer might not notice — and then try different things when the driver’s complaining about something or saying the car can be improved in a certain way.

“It’s the engineer’s expertise that can tell them what sort of setup change and direction they can go in. That’s not something the driver might know unless they have so much experience with setup changes.”

The virtual world also gives engineers — either working exclusively in the virtual world, or preparing for the real world — more time and space to figure out solutions.

“In real life, often the engineer has to make informed decisions on what not to look into, and to decide just based on their own experience, different aspects of the car to ignore or keep the same while they try and converge on a precise setting on a different aspect of the car,” Campbell says. “While in sim racing, you can basically sweep through all of these things because you have as much time as the drivers are willing to spend online.”

That being said, for drivers, the idea of “just pressing the reset button” feels like less of a luxury.

“Even just the process of resetting the lap if you make a mistake or crash still takes time — the time it takes to reset, but also the time it takes to start that lap over,” explains Cassill. “If you’re doing that, not even on a warmup, on a run change that you make in the car so that they can compare the data after the fact, you’re trying to get a clean lap for every single change.

“If you keep making mistakes or if you keep crashing, you’re kind of muddying up the data and resetting and that time compounds on itself. Just like any line of work — racing isn’t really that special when you’re trying to think of time over productivity, right? Just like anything, you get to the end of your shift and you’re like, ‘Man, have two more runs to get through — where did we lose that time?’ So I always try to be as efficient as possible in my feedback and how I get up to speed.

“To me it’s very similar to the final hour of a practice session. It’s like a two-minute drill for a quarterback. I try to approach the sim sessions as seriously as I would a practice session and be as efficient and diligent as possible.”

Because saving time, ultimately, is what results on the racetrack are all about.

Podcast: Jordan Taylor on IMSA, NASCAR, Garage 56 and beyond

Jordan Taylor is having a career year personally with involvement in the Garage 56 program, the NASCAR opportunities he had, and his continued involvement in IMSA with Corvette Racing. Taylor joins The Racing Writer’s Podcast to share how overwhelming it’s been at times but what it’s meant to have his name spoken more in the motorsports world.

Podcast: Mike Rockenfeller on Garage 56 and beyond

Mike Rockenfeller believes the buzz from NASCAR’s entry in Le Mans is still going strong, and he’s still relishing having the opportunity to be a part of it. Among the topics “Rocky” (pictured at right, above, with G56 teammate Jenson Button) delves into on The Racing Writer’s Podcast is how the experience compared to his past Le Mans trips, navigating a change in his sports car career (as his own manager), and experiencing firsts in the United States.

Garage 56 extends Le Mans mission at UK American SpeedFest

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 John Doonan 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.”

Doonan was 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

Doonan was 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 SpeedFest, 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 organisation’s 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 SpeedFest 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.

Beyond that, when and whether the modified Cup Series Camaro will run in a competitive environment again is unclear. “We will have to wait and see,” Doonan told RACER.

Garage 56 Le Mans farewell with Jenson Button and John Doonan

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 CLICK HERE to watch on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch the full Garage 56 video series

Garage 56 celebrates ‘mission accomplished’ at Le Mans

The champagne glasses were already lined up as NASCAR Chairman Jim France walked into the Garage 56 team garage on the Cirque de le Sarthe pit road in the closing minutes of the 24 Hours of Le Mans on Sunday. But instead of an “early” toast, he …

NASCAR executives Mike Helton and Steve O’Donnell, Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick and team Vice Chairman Jeff Gordon joined IMSA President John Doonan nearby as seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson turned the race’s final laps in the No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.

They were not just watching those last moments, but soaking it all in — more than a year from conception to execution to champagne. The excitement was palpable. The impending achievement a heart-full.

And less than 10 minutes later, Johnson drove across that famous Le Mans finish line — the enormous grandstand crowd outside screaming in approval and the team’s familial crowd inside the garage erupting in applause and cheers as well. NASCAR’s return to Le Mans for the first time since 1976 was an absolute success.

“We’re thrilled,” France said. “I’m so proud of everybody. We came over here to make a good impression on the fans over here and I’m so proud we were able to run all the way. This is a big challenge and it’s gratifying to run the distance here.

“I love France and I love the fans over here too, so it’s been very heart-warming.”

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If there were many in the enthusiastic crowd of 300,000 at Le Mans this weekend that weren’t already familiar with NASCAR, they certainly left the famous sports car course converted and seemingly all on board. The unmistakable sound of the engine of that Hendrick Motorsports-prepared Chevrolet was a high-volume appeal every single one of the 285 times it completed a lap of competition around the iconic 8.476-mile course.

“My heart’s full,” Johnson said after making his way back to the team’s pit-side celebration. “All the reasons we came here with NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports, Chevrolet and Goodyear, to come here with so many different faces and have this experience has just been awesome. My bucket’s full. I’m really happy.”

Even in the sort of exuberant exhaustion that exists in endurance racing, this team — from driver to crew to support staff and high-level executive — was still smiling, high-fiving and full of competitive energy 24 long hours after NBA superstar Lebron James issued the starting command for the Centennial celebration of the legendary race.

Johnson and his co-drivers, Formula 1 champion Jenson Button, sports car star Mike Rockenfeller and reserve driver Jordan Taylor had spoken often and fondly of their expectations on-track and in the lead-up to the race weekend. And by all accounts it was exactly the kind of unforgettable experience they all foresaw.

The car ultimately finished 39th out of 62 cars entered — the lone member of the special “Innovative Car class.”

It completed a distance more than three times that of the NASCAR Cup Series’ traditional test of “endurance,” the Coca-Cola 600, which was completed just two weeks ago a at Charlotte Motor Speedway. With six hours remaining in the twice-around-the-clock classic, it had out-paced all the GT entries and was holding steady in 28th position among the 62-car field.

But as is so often the case in endurance sports car racing, the morning light brings a new outlook, and in many cases new challenges and that’s what the team dealt with in the closing hours of the race.

After completing lap 254 — only 10 laps into a scheduled double stint for Button — the car had an extended stop for new brakes. It went back out, but he had to pit again to for the team to diagnose and repair a drive line issue. The team — led by Hendrick’s Vice President of Competition Chad Knaus and longtime crew chief Greg Ives — went to work ensuring the historic week finished on the same high note it started.

The Ferrari AF Corse No. 51 team scored a popular overall win — claiming its first Le Mans victory since 1965. But the NASCAR celebration rivaled even that.

This effort — more than a year of highly choreographed work between all the partners was important both personally for the people involved and in the broader scale for NASCAR and IMSA — a showcase of the talent and determination both series feature and a culmination of a multi-level effort to bring NASCAR to Le Mans again — for the first time in nearly 50 years.

Throughout the entire race week, and in particular during the race weekend, the NASCAR display center in the Le Mans infield was filled with both the hard-core European fans — many getting that first up-close look at a series they already embraced -– and also the newly converted stock car lovers.

“There have been so many unique moments in this, but ultimately I would say the fan reception [impacted most],” Johnson said. “If it was in the parade, or just the cool down lap on the way back, even the corner marshals were going nuts, it was impressive.

“Chatting with them and the fact so may foreign race fans pay attention to NASCAR and also knew about my career. I praise them because their broken English was a lot better than my French, so to have them speak of my career and have them follow me and NASCAR, whatever it might be I was just so impressed with how many race fans know about this sport.”

Simply put, the Garage 56 project delivered.

Button came away impressed with the performance and attitude of the Hendrick Motorsports crew. Rainier Ehrhardt/Motorsport Images

“I retired from F1 so I could race in other things,” Button said. “I wanted to have fun.

“You can certainly see why they’ve won so many championships over the years,” he said of Hendrick Motorsports. “Great team to work with but also not just how good they are with what they do, but the attitude. They know the importance of this race, but they also want to enjoy themselves while doing it. And that’s exactly why I’m here. It’s fun and we’ve enjoyed this journey. We’re going to savor this moment.”

Doonan’s voice may have been a little hoarse as he stood near the back of the garage after celebrating. But he was still smiling.

“It’s beyond expectations,” Doonan said. “Jim [France] had his expectations that we put NASCAR further on a global stage and satisfy our partners that were critical for this to happen. I think most rewarding for me was seeing all the men and women in this program experience this place, this event, especially it being the 100thanniversary. I walk out of this circuit this evening with a whole new group of friends in this industry. And that’s hard to come by.”

Johnson — who brought a career worth of championship acclaim with him to Europe — did not mince words describing how he felt. And perhaps how it appeared everyone felt Sunday afternoon.

“Pretty damn good,” Johnson said with a huge smile. “Just awesome.”

Tag: Garage 56