Jenson Button, Mike Rockenfeller to drive NASCAR's Garage 56 car in England
NASCAR‘s Garage 56 team, which ran at the 24 Hours of Le Mans last month, will ride again this week at the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb in West Sussex, England. Two of the Le Mans drivers, Jenson Button and Mike Rockenfeller, return to drive the identical Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 used at Le Mans.
The Hillclimb involves driving up a 1.16-mile hill that features nine turns.
“The Garage 56 program has been an overwhelming success for us in further introducing motorsports fans from around the world to NASCAR,” International Motor Sports Association president and Garage 56 program manager John Doonan said in a statement. “Taking the Garage 56 car to the Goodwood Festival of Speed gives us another chance to bring the world of stock cars to fans of a wide variety of motorsports.”
Button and Rockenfeller are both highly skilled drivers. Button won the 2009 F1 world title and the 2018 Super GT Series with Naoki Yamamoto. Rockenfeller won the 2010 Le Mans.
Jimmie Johnson, who drove with the team at Le Mans, will not be racing with the team in England.
The Garage 56 car, which was in the Innovative car category, completed 285 laps at Le Mans as they finished in 39th. NASCAR CEO Jim France and many others viewed it as a very successful weekend of work.
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“That was thousands of hours of hard work by hundreds of people that went into making this thing happen. And then the way the team and the pit crews and everybody performed all week, it was just fantastic,” France said. “I hope my dad and my brother are somewhere up there looking down and smiling but the goal when we set out was to try and finish the race running at the end and not be last. And we accomplished that.”
The impact of the race and the Garage 56 car could continue to reverberate for years to come. The 43-year-old Button, who is from the United Kingdom, thinks it could spark a potential NASCAR race in Europe next year.
“I do think it can be big and doing a race next year would be great,” Button said at a press conference last month. “We have to get the jump on what we did at Le Mans. I think it has such a big following, it created so many memes, I saw the craze on social media.”