Jenson Button gears up for the 24 Hours of Le Mans and tests for the first time at the legendary French circuit in a Chevrolet Camaro ZL-1, a NASCAR car that has been redesigned specifically for the 24 Hour Marathon.
Along with Jimmie Johnson and Mike Rockenfeller, Button will have to race out of the standings at Le Mans – their crew will compete in the so-called “Innovation” class. Therefore, the 2009 world champion has no sporting goals, but participation in the 24 hours of Le Mans allows the organizers of NASCAR to attract international attention to their series.
The results of the first practice confirm the correctness of this calculation: car number 24 can even lap the track of 13,625 km faster than the sports cars of the LMGTE Am category, with which it is the most correct to compare. Jenson and his teammates finished the day 2.3 seconds ahead of the fastest crew in their class.
“It was a fun practice day ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans,” Button shared on his social media pages yesterday. Our car looks cool! At the same time, it’s fast – I forgot to add, it’s big too!
His teammate Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time NASCAR champion, said in more detail: “The practice went really well for many reasons. Firstly simply because I have wanted to come here for a long time and participate in this race. Then after a few laps I felt the car had good pace and this was a confirmation of the hard work everyone on the Hendrick Motorsports team has put in.
We were concerned that we would be able to show excellent speed on the straights but not be fast enough in high-speed corners compared to the GT cars, but it turned out that we are much closer to them than you might think . We even drive a bit slow on straights. But this can be fixed.
There are still 18 hours of practice and a 24 hour race ahead of us where a lot of things can go wrong, but on the first day I have to say it went great.
In the hypercar class, the Ferrari works team’s Antonio Giovinazzi had the fastest lap, while Pietro Fittipaldi, Haas F1 reserve driver at Le Mans for the Jota team, had the fastest lap in the LMP2 category.
Signings take place today at Le Mans, with an evening session in the city center in the evening and qualifying races starting on Wednesday. The qualifying final will take place on Thursday evening.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
