Kyle Larson was doing burnouts on the deck of the USS Midway last week for the NASCAR 26 cover reveal in an odd-looking car.
It featured his usual HendrickCars.com paint scheme and the Camaro ZL1 grille from his Cup Series car, but had different lights that didn’t match up and two seats. The car raised a lot of eyebrows because Chevrolet will be launching a new Camaro next year that will also spawn a redesigned Cup Series entry for its teams.
However, it turns out the vehicle was a demonstration car that NASCAR owns, which is designed to be non-OEM specific so that it can be used for various promotional purposes. One of those includes taking passengers on hot laps and that’s what NASCAR COO Ben Kennedy did after Larson’s event.
The former Truck Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series driver took Coronado Naval Base Commanding Officer Captain Loren Jacobi for a spin in the car around the track NASCAR built for the race.
The Hendrick wrap had been removed and replaced with the NASCAR Speed Seat graphics it wears for this purpose.
It is a real seventh generation Cup Series car, however, complete with its sequential five-speed transmission, which Kennedy had never driven before.
“It was an absolute blast,” Kennedy said in a social media post. “Just an incredible experience unlike any other.”
Kennedy deemed the NASCAR race weekend a “tremendous success” with 125,000 fans attending.
“Really proud of the effort the entire team has put into this,” Kennedy said during a press conference. “Obviously our partnership with the United States Navy has been tremendous. Not only do they fight for our country and freedom every single day, but Naval Base Coronado opened up their doors. This is their backyard, it’s where they live, work, play. They opened up their base to us, let us in, have been tremendous partners.”
NASCAR hasn’t yet confirmed that it will return to the base, but is considering it and will review the event and its future viability with the U.S. Navy.
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