As before, the NASCAR Cup Series Camaro wears ZL1 branding—a nod to the 650-hp Camaro model of the same name you can walk into a dealership and buy today.
As much as Chevy touts these improvements as more closely tying the NASCAR racer to the production Camaro ZL1, the bow-tie brand’s NASCAR entry really shares the majority of its important bits with other Next Gen racers, including those from Ford and Toyota.
Underneath, the Camaro ZL1 is equipped with a smooth underbody and a diffuser, while even deeper within the bodywork hides bolt-on front and rear clips that are said to improve post-crash repairability.
We’re almost as excited to watch the action as we are to see the cars, which now look markedly more like real vehicles than before, bringing NASCAR spiritually closer to its opening days, when production-based V-8-powered full-size American sedans duked it out.