Kevin Harvick has now suggested that Rick Hendrick’s Garage 56 Le Mans project may have already exposed how NASCAR can fix the controversial Next Gen car.

This Hendrick-built Camaro was just a heavily modified version of the current Cup Series car that competed at the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans, yet shaved a lot of the weight, which continues to be an issue with our Next Gen machine.

Harvick began by highlighting how he believed that the car was the issue. “The elephant in the room is the car,” Harvick admitted. “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to work on the aero and trying to work on things.”

The issues, as he added, were two-fold. “I truly believe, one, I think NASCAR needs to listen to the teams less,” Harvick explained. “I think we need to make some of those bold decisions.”

The 2014 Cup Series champion then went on to analyse the current package, as he added, “I think the car is too heavy,” he bluntly stated. “I think the simple diffuser needs to be on the race car at every single race. I think that has made the racing better. I think that we need a lot more horsepower.”

Harvick also hinted that Hendrick’s Le Mans effort had already shown a possible solution to these issues. Drawing from the Garage 56 project, he explained, “When you look at the Le Mans car that Hendrick ran, there are a lot of things on that car.”

He then revealed the key point behind his argument. “They did a lot of things to take weight out of that car.”

Harvick then went on to critique the current platform even more as he added, “This car is too much car for our kind of racing. It’s too much splitter. It’s too much underbody downforce. It’s too much wheel. It’s too much tire.”

Even Clint Bowyer was forced to admit how much of a cost failure the current platform was. “It’s a $400,000 plus car with no engine,” Bowyer revealed.

But what was this Hendrick car that seemed to be the baseline for this conversation, and what was so special about it? Let’s find out.

Garage 56 upgrades show why Hendrick spent millions

The Garage 56 Camaro was anything but normal. Hendrick Motorsports had set this new Next Gen platform up with several new endurance-racing upgrades, such as adding carbon brakes, a better diffuser package, and even a larger 32-gallon fuel cell. The issue of weight was dealt with by cutting mass across the chassis.

Lightweight tires by Goodyear Eagle were also modified to reduce drag as well as weight. This effort to reduce mass was so excellent that the car dropped to nearly 2,960 pounds, which is far lighter than a standard NASCAR car, which comes in at around 3300 pounds on average.

This is exactly why Kevin Harvick admitted the excellence of Hendrick’s engineering that was spent on the vehicle. And with driver complaints coming into the season regarding the weight of the Next Gen car, maybe copying Hendrick’s efforts could solve this once and for all.

You can read more on the Daytona Racing Digest!

Written by

Uday Jakhar

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason