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Originally Posted by Matt'sSS
Yep, from what I remember their last year cars were Pontiac Solstice & that chassis happened to be the same wheelbase as the Camaro. I'm sure there was a lot more involved than just swapping body panels though. Unfortunately when I did get to see them in person at Homestead I didn't make it to the pits to check out the cars up close, so I haven't seen their construction myself yet. I was hoping to this year but since the season's over I'm guessing I wont be seeing them there at the Indy race again this year :(
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Libertyforall1776
Supposedly they are all tube framed Riley chassis. Camaro in name and look only. No more a Camaro than a Nextel Cup car is an Impala...
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Kind of correct on both accounts. But not totally.
(sorry digging up an old thread)
The Rolex GT cars are designed and manufactured by Pratt and Miller Engineering. They are the go-to engineering-build company for all of GMs factory racing efforts. You may be familiar with them from their fantastic reputation for the Corvette Racing effort.
The Current 5th Gen Camaro chassises that Stevenson runs is an updated design that dates back to the GTO (late model) racing days, ran by TRG. That chassis design was then optimized and built to suit the Pontiac GXP-R race program. This involved some wheelbase and suspension modifications, on top of the drastically different body panel and aero package.
So, when it came time to develop the 5th Generation Camaro race program, they went to a known winner, and optimized it even further for the Camaro accordingly.
The Continental Tire Challenge Camaros are the Riley built cars, IIRC.
The only thing that its unfair to paint a comparison of these cars to Nascar. We all know that NASCAR has nothing to do with actual "stock" cars. But these Camaro race cars are much more similar in construction to their production counterparts than NASCAR. There are a couple of major reasons.
The first being that the foot print is always very close. The second is that the aero performance (based on frontal area) is very close as well, due to the bodywork being VERY similar (especially in the Camaro's case). The engines are also very similar to the production engines, and in some circumstances, are actually de-tuned to race trim! That on top of running similar suspension architecture, and pick up points, and you can start to see why NASCAR (which has none of the characteristics I just mentioned) is a different category when it comes to "likeness to production cars."
With that said, the Riley built Continental Tire cars ARE production based cars, unlike the tube chassis of the Rolex GT builds.
Hope that helps clear some of that up!