It’s Sunday morning at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and I’m standing in the garage stall for the race’s experimental class, Garage 56. This year, the Garage 56 entry belongs to NASCAR and one of its most famous teams, Hendrick Motorsports, who together brought a huge, loud, hilariously American V-8 Chevy Camaro to the French countryside. It’s roaring in the distance.
Soon, IMSA champion and Garage 56 driver coach Jordan Taylor emerges from a wall of screens wearing a black sweatshirt that says “COACH” on it in cracking white letters. Taylor looks almost rested for 17 hours in; he has a bounce in his step that I certainly don’t, pulling his headset around his neck just in time for me to ask: “Have you been up this whole time?”
“Yeah,” he responds.
“Did you plan on sleeping?” I ask.
“Oh yeah.”
“So what happened there?”
“I got peer-pressured into staying up all night.”
“Who peer-pressured you?”
“Greg and Chad.”
Jordan and Mike Rockenfeller during practice
Greg and Chad, of course, are Hendrick Motorsports’ Greg Ives and Chad Knaus, the latter of whom won seven championships and 81 races as crew chief for Jimmie Johnson in the top-level NASCAR Cup Series. Ives was a race engineer on Johnson’s car from 2006 to 2012, which included Johnson’s record five-consecutive titles, then became a crew chief himself. Knaus became Hendrick’s vice president of competition, and Johnson retired from full-time Cup racing after the 2020 season.
Greg is pointing, Chad is in the back in the white shirt, and Jimmie is standing behind them.
Now, the gang’s back together at the 8.5-mile Circuit de la Sarthe. They’re joined by Taylor, as well as Johnson’s co-drivers, Formula One champion Jenson Button and two-time Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller. The race has two main types of vehicles—prototypes and GTE sports cars, which have huge speed differentials—and the Garage 56 car falls in the middle.
“What am I doing?” Taylor tells me. “To begin, it was just kind of letting the guys know what to expect traffic wise—where cars pass you, where to be careful in the changing conditions, what to look out for in the rain and the dry, the dangerous spots.
Now, the gang’s back together at the 8.5-mile Circuit de la Sarthe. They’re joined by Taylor, as well as Johnson’s co-drivers, Formula One champion Jenson Button and two-time Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller. The race has two main types of vehicles—prototypes and GTE sports cars, which have huge speed differentials—and the Garage 56 car falls in the middle.
“What am I doing?” Taylor tells me. “To begin, it was just kind of letting the guys know what to expect traffic wise—where cars pass you, where to be careful in the changing conditions, what to look out for in the rain and the dry, the dangerous spots.
“It’s Jimmie’s first time here, it’s Jenson’s first time here in a GT car, and we’re not the fastest class. So if we have a pack of prototypes coming up, [I] let them know.”
Garage 56 debuted in 2012 as a place to show off innovation, and the car in it can’t officially win because it doesn’t have to abide by technical regulations. The NASCAR entry is a highly modified version of the Cup Series’ new Next Gen car, with real headlights and taillights, dive planes, more downforce, less weight, paddle shifters, a huge fuel tank, and more. Garage 56 is effectively a publicity stunt for NASCAR—the goal is to show that the Next Gen is a versatile road-course vehicle that can compete around the world, not just one designed to turn left in America.
The result is a car that looks like a Suburban in a sea of Miatas and sounds like the Earth splitting in two. It’s so much louder than every other car on track that each time my head begins to droop from exhaustion, it thunders by and jolts me upright
