Goodyear's Out-sized Effort
The American tire manufacturer's 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans work includes some special developments for a very special entry.
Goodyear is no stranger to Le Mans, having provided tires for the LMP2 class for the last several years. But the company brought something new to Circuit de la Sarthe this year--bespoke tires for the race's special Garage 56 entry.
Started in 2012, Garage 56 is a special program by 24 Hours of Le Mans organizer Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) that permits a single, extra entry that showcases novel or innovative concepts. This year's special entry--the sixth in Garage 56's history--is an American-style NASCAR race car, a collective effort by Hendrick Motorsports, IMSA, Chevrolet, NASCAR, and Goodyear.
The Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 doesn't look much like its closest competitors, the LMGTE Am "grand touring" class Porsches, Ferraris, Aston Martins, and lone Corvette. Go below the surface, and more differences--and challenges for Goodyear--emerge.
Start with weight. The Garage 56 entry's published, no-fuel weight is 2,960 lb, more than 200 lb. above the LMGTE's comparable minimum weight of 2,745 lb. The Garage 56 team did well to slim down its car compared to the spec NASCAR Next Gen entries run in the U.S., which weigh in at 3,485 lb. Still, the lighter body panels, composite disc brakes, wheels, and other redesigned parts leave the Le Mans entry several hundred pounds heavier than the cars around it. Add fuel--it has a 32-gallon fuel cell, compared to 20 gallon cells on the spec NASCAR hot rods--and the weight jumps to around 3,250 lb.
While the lighter weight helps Goodyear compared to the comparable cars it supplies in the U.S., the 24 Hours of Le Mans' demanding requirements presented plenty more challenges.
As explained in a must-watch video by Racer's Marshall Pruett, the Garage 56 team understood right away nthat the rear tires on front-engine, rear-wheel drive machine would play a crucial role in helping the car keep pace. One of the first requested deviations from the Next Gen car: larger rear tires, NASCAR VP-Vehicle Design Brandon Thomas tells Pruett.
Goodyear and wheel supplier BBS teamed up to provide 13.5-inch wide rear tires and 12.5-inch for the basic setup. (The wets are 12 inches wide all around.) That compares to 12 inches of tread width on the NASCAR Next Gen cars. Despite being larger, a set of Garage 56 wheels is 22 pounds lighter than their NASCAR counterparts, Thomas adds.
Then there’s durability. In the U.S., NASCAR wants pit stops to include tire changes, so Goodyear supplies tires made to degrade--the typical life of a top-end NASCAR tire is about 100 miles, Goodyear says. NASCAR's top level, where the Next Gen car competes, has been using rain tires for only a few years, and--until this year--only on road courses.
Endurance racing, and Le Mans in particular, is different.
The LMP2 tires Goodyear provides have a harder compound meant to help them last several stints, allowing fuel-only stops between tire changes. Some LMP2 teams get up to four stints--roughly 370 miles--out of a single set of tires.
If all goes as planned, the Garage 56 entry will go much farther at Le Mans than any NASCAR race distance. The longest top-level NASCAR race is 600 miles; last year's winning GT Pro class entry turned a cool 2,963 miles, or 350 laps, around the 8.46-mile Circuit de la Sarthe.
And of course, Le Mans is, barring monsoon-like conditions, an all-weather affair, including cold temperatures at night. That means not just slicks and rain tires, but other options as well. For the Garage 56 entry, Goodyear developed three options: a slick for dry conditions, an intermediate wet meant for mist up to light rain, and a full wet featuring a softer tread compound meant to maintain grip when the track is cool, Goodyear says. Its LMP2 tire choices are slick and wet.
Michelin, tire supplier for the top-end Hypercar and LMGTE Am classes, brought three slick compounds--soft cold, soft hot, and medium--and one wet-weather option for each of those classes.
All tires are color-coded on the sidewalls for easy identification. Check out this Racer blurb for all the codes.
In the Garage 56 spirit, Goodyear also added some new technology to its bespoke tires--a sensor that provides real-time data to Hendrick Motorsports while the car is on track. The passive sensor, cured into the tire during production, will relay temperature and pressure data and help the team strategize and make changes in real time.
Developing the tires was a group effort. Goodyear led the way, of course, but Garage 56 team members, including drivers Jenson Button, Jimmie Johnson, and 2012 overall Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller and driver coach (and race-weekend alternate) Jordan Taylor had significant input, Goodyear says. Testing saw the car and tires turn laps at eight locations over the last 12 months, racking up more than 7,500 miles.
As this story is pushed out, it's still early days during Le Mans race week. But the Garage 56 entry--which will not be scored and can't win the race or any official class--is turning heads. During the first test day on June 7, Rockenfeller posted a lap of 3:53.61, more than 2 seconds better than the fastest top LMGTE Am competitor, the No. 66 JMW Motorsport Ferrari 488 GTE EVO. (The top Hypercar, the Ferrari AF Corse No. 50 with Antonio Giovinazzi behind the wheel, turned the day's fastest lap at 3:29.50.)
Then, the Garage 56 over-the-wall gang--all NASCAR veterans--went out and won the pit stop challenge, besting 16 LMGTE AM teams. And they did it using NASCAR-style manual floor jack—the only team without the typical automatic air jack used in high-end endurance racing.
The pit-stop challenge suggests the bespoke Goodyear tires aren't hard to handle. Following more than a year of development and testing, early returns from Circuit de la Sarthe indicate that the Garage 56 entry may be much harder for the rest of the 62-car field to handle than anybody imagined.
References
Goodyear durability data—https://news.goodyear.eu/goodyear-and-le-mans-the-collaboration-behind-nascars-return-to-la-sarthe/
Goodyear sensor—https://news.goodyear.eu/goodyear-introduces-first-real-time-tire-intelligence-capabilities-at-24-hours-of-le-mans/