7aMoDi Posted February 24, 2024 Posted February 24, 2024 The car that wowed the crowds at Le Mans wowed us at VIR. Lap Time: 2:26.7 Class: LLPRO In case you missed it, the NASCAR Next Gen Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, or G56 Camaro for short, is the stock car that raced alongside hybrid prototypes at Le Mans. Its naturally aspirated 5.8-liter V-8 won the hearts of the crowd and showcased the uniquely American motorsports series on an international stage. Hendrick Motorsports manufactured and managed the project, from which two cars were made: the development car seen here and the one that did 285 laps of the 8.5-mile Circuit de la Sarthe last June. We thought our Lightning Lap pitch would land in a spam folder, but Rick Hendrick not only read our email, he agreed to bring the car out and even let us drive it. The instructions were clear: Don't crash Mr. H's car. And the way his eye twinkles when he talks about the G56 project, it may be his all-time favorite car. He loves to watch it run, so much so that he flew in on his helicopter from his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. MICHAEL SIMARI AND MARC URBANO|CAR AND DRIVER Our sighting laps (because there is no way to go for time in a handful of laps in an unfamiliar race car) were enough to grasp that this car is rad in the most NASCAR way. It's loud. It's fast. It's big—almost as wide as a pickup, over 10 inches longer than a Corvette—but it's Bernese Mountain Dog, lovably big. The seating position is a bit lower and a bit more reclined than in a modern Cup car. Visibility over the long hood is fair, but the deep cockpit of the G56 car turns VIR's limited-sight areas—braking and entry into *****, the sequence after Spiral, and Roller Coaster to a degree—into blind events. Even lapping gingerly, the 700-ish-hp V-8 makes enough power to drive off corners with some yaw. The steering is ultra-quick and plutonium-238 reactive. It took a couple of laps to extinguish the cold-brakes warning (carbon-carbon rotors need heat to work properly), and while trying to explore grip levels, we locked the rears on the uphill going into Spiral and slid to a stop. Our man was only the sixth person to drive the car, and we hope the sixth to spin it. Back in the pits, we consult with Jordan Taylor. The 10-year IMSA veteran didn't race the car in France but did a lot of its development. He has good taste, calling VIR one of his favorite tracks in the world, and he admitted that he locked the brakes in the same spot, so we think this consultation was all he needed to change his setup for the final attempt at a flying lap. MICHAEL SIMARI AND MARC URBANO|CAR AND DRIVER He still locked the rears going into Turn 1, resulting in a low 1.19 g's of lateral acceleration there. The rest of the lap was clean, particularly on the Full Course corners he knows. Taylor marches up the Climbing Esses like the rest of the world is crawling, averaging 158.5 mph, more than 20 mph faster than any street car we've lapped and nearly 6 mph faster than Subaru's Airslayer. He trumps the Subie's minimum speeds by 6.7 mph in the difficult Turn 3, 6.1 in the off-camber Turn 10, and 4.2 in Hog Pen. Who says stock cars can't turn right? Taylor's 2:26.7 fell short of the Airslayer's best time, but we'd bet that with a little more sim work, he could match the Subaru's lap time if given another shot. We hope the effort expended to make a stock car run fast for 24 hours doesn't stop. An all-NASCAR endurance race might be more fun than that 24-hour race in France. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a46594920/garage-56-chevrolet-camaro-zl1-lightning-lap-2024/
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