With a big Name Behind the Wheel, Garage 56 Tests at Virginia International

​"...it’s just a lot faster. I mean, to give you a figure, around here, I think we are around 10 seconds faster than what I did in a Cup car, so it’s quite a lot faster.” - Mike Rockenfeller.

BY: Tom Luttermoser

Monday afternoon saw the second test of the Garage 56 Le Mans "NASCAR" race car. The car itself is a modified Hendrick Motorsports supplied Chevrolet supported Camaro ZL1 NASCAR Cup car as seen above. The car spent the day testing on the Full 3.27 mile course. 

Wheeling the Garage 56 test car was Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller who wheeled the previous test at Road Atlanta. Rockenfeller has 1 overall win and 2 class victories at the legendary race in the French countryside. As for NASCAR, Mike has 2 Cup Series starts in the NEXT GEN car for Spire Motorsports. He was joined at VIR by Hendrick Motorsports royalty, VP of Competition Chad Knaus as well as former crew chief of the Cup Series #48 for Alex Bowman, Greg Ives. 

Some of the obvious modifications on the outside of the car are the open grill slot above the NASCAR regulated lower grill opening likely forcing the air directly to the engine. Other exterior obvious changes are the new, much larger carbon fiber splitter as well as more aero bits along the sides of the front and rear of the car adding what one could only assume is a ton more downforce. Also added to G56 are traction control, Paddle shifters on a completely different steering wheel and even more horsepower.

"...it’s just a lot faster. I mean, to give you a figure, around here, I think we are around 10 seconds faster than what I did in a Cup car, so it’s quite a lot faster.” - Mike Rockenfeller.

Knaus said that the car is still a work in progress saying "It's still an infant." “So we’re still trying to get it to go and honestly, the way it ran today, I’m actually pleased with the performance of the car. We’ve just got to start to work out some of the bugs.”

Per NASCAR.com, an electrical 'gremlin' cut the morning runs that Knaus found to be a distribution module fault, but the test was cut short after a fuel pump issue.

Images below all via Hendrick Motorsports