Dedicated to a car that certainly lived up to the hype, yet also divided opinion a lot more than I expected. People either loved or hated the freedom machine! Ran under the Garage56 Invitational Class, celebrating 75 years of NASCAR, driven by arguably the strongest lineup at the 24 hours of Le Mans this year with 2009 F1 champ Jenson Button, 7 time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and former winner of Le Mans , Nurburgring and Spa 24 hour races Mike Rockenfeller, ran by the 16 time NASCAR champions Hendrick Motorsports and containing a V8 likely putting out somewhere in the region of 800bhp, this was always going to be a treat to watch. It spent most of the week comfortably ahead of the GTE class cars, even blasting past a number of LMP2's that found themselves in its way when a straight came along! Sadly a late gearbox rebuild meant it fell down the order, but it still finished and made it past the localised monsoons that fell mid race wiping a number of the field out, yet the car that normally doesn't run in the rain at all, kept on the road. Personally my only disappointment with it is that we'll never see it used again, and it's likely to be the closest we're seeing to a Cup race in Europe for at least a decade if not more. NASCAR, get on it!
