“Strange and exciting.” Those are the words that came into FIA chief technical and safety officer Xavier Mestelan Pinon’s mind when he was told about the Garage 56 entry for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. And for good reason. The car that filled the grid slot reserved – but not always allocated – for an innovative or experimental car at the World Endurance Championship blue riband was, off all things, a NASCAR Cup contender.
It was strange because an American stock car, Next Gen Cup racer developed in conjunction with Dallara or no, is very different from the prototype and GT machinery that makes up the WEC grid. And it was exciting for the very same reason.
Incorporating the Chevrolet Camaro LS1 run by Hendrick Motorsports and driven by Jenson Button, Jimmie Johnson and Mike Rockenfeller into that field of Hypercar, LMP2 and GTE Am cars was the challenge faced by Le Mans organiser the Automobile Club de l’Ouest in conjunction with the FIA, co-organiser of the WEC.
“The car was extreme,” he says. “That’s in terms of power, weight and design. It’s very different from what we are usually looking at in Formula 1, endurance and rallying. It was something completely new, a breath of fresh air, a nice project for the FIA and myself personally.”
Mestelan Pinon, who joined the FIA in February 2021 after a 20-year career at Citroen and sister brand DS, stresses that Garage 56 is what he calls “an ACO project”. But the FIA has the responsibility for the safety, which was the twin challenge faced along with just how it would fit into the existing class structure at the French enduro. He describes meeting those challenges as “a collaborative effort” involving the twin sanctioning bodies of the WEC and also NASCAR and IMSA, which oversaw the project under the leadership of its boss, John Doonan.
It was far from a new collaboration, however. The FIA, ACO and IMSA had jointly devised the LMP2 rulebook that came into force in 2017 and then the LMDh category, which from this year is an integral part of the WEC. NASCAR, meanwhile, has an involvement in a number of FIA working groups, including the one headed ‘research and strategy’, which looks at the future of motorsport.
Source: Autosport