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While there's never much talk around here about international racing, I've been following preparations for Nissan's full-out return to world endurance racing with the NISMO GT-R LM. This radical car has been touted as an innovative and radical challenge to the more conventional prototypes from Audi, Porsche and Toyota.
Nissan Europe has funded a massive three car entry to the race, but despite a lot of testing (in the U.S. ironically) the car lacks pace. After three qualifying sessions, the NISMO GT-R LMs were almost 20 seconds off the top qualifying times! The cars qualified 12th, 13th and 14th in LMP1 and will be forced to start from the rear of the field after failing to make the 110% rule (must qualify within 110% of the fastest car's time) in effect at LeMans.
Now LeMans is the supreme test of endurance, and there's a chance one of the three Nissan entries will finish higher than their lowly starting positions. But with that big a disparity in lap times, there's also a chance the Nissan entries will be embarrassed in the race. Nissan is putting a brave face before the start of the race on Saturday, but I wonder what is going on internally? After all, Nissan is used to running up front (innovation or not) and has been close to winning LeMans in the past. A multi-million dollar race effort is expected to produce results, and I doubt this is what Nissan had in mind...
This will be an exciting and interesting race this year at LeMans! I hope to watch most of it this weekend.
IIRC, isn't one of the drivers for Nissan a winner of the GT Academy?
There are actually three GT Academy graduates (Jann Mardenborough, Lucas Ordóñez, and Mark Shulzhitskiy) racing in the factory Nissan LeMans effort this weekend.
^Agree, although to give him some credit the DeltaWing was originally a proposal for the IndyCar Series.
And they can't say its the engine because 3/4 of LMP2 entries are Nissan powered, AND every single LMP2 entry but one out-qualified the GTR LM LMP1 cars.
EDIT: They started where they started because of the 110% rule, their raw times put all three cars at the back of the LMP1 field, but two of the three cars ran in front of all the LMP2 cars.
Being it's debut season they deserve some quarter, and admittedly their goal is to prove that this concept can compete in LMP1 for 2016. I remember things weren't boding well back in March for this project, when they failed crash tests but there were also questions around its pace. With such a radical design, one would expect outright speed or bust.
I hope they finish the race, it will be their only saving grace. But hey its Le Mans, anything can happen.
Audi, Porsche, Toyota, Bentley, Peugeot, Mercedes, etc: they have had similar starts to their development. Knew it was going to be an uphill battle when they didn't make any of the pre-LeMans races.
I heard Nissan was running without the use of their hybrid flywheel system. Did they get it working for qualifying?
I, for one, am just happy to see Nissan ACTIVE at LeMans. It means that the company still has faith in its ability to be competitive. This also means that future Z-cars and other Nissan passenger cars (fingers crossed) will be beneficiary to many of the race innovations as they have been throughout its competition history.
I worked for Nissan (nee Datsun) back in the days when they dominated production car racing and did spectacularly in IMSA with the GTP ZX (which had massive teething problems first year too - until Devendorf fixed all the electrical gremlins) and they also took GTU and eventually GTO wins. I do miss those days. However, they are still a force and anyone overlooking them, well, tough on them when Nissan does finally win a prestigious enduro.
And, while the "Infiniti" engine found in the Red Bull F1 cars isn't quite competitive (nor is it a Nissan but for some development bits, hello, Renault?), it again gives me great faith in the company sticking to their guns.
So , I look at this year's Luh Mah effort as - hopefully - a development year and as someone else said, look to be a contender in '16!
It's like any other sports team support.... true fans love 'em through the good and the bad years. Go Warriors!!
Hahahahahahaha...... don't be hatin', I don't really care about ball sports - any of 'em - but it's a local thing. My wife and her family (particularly momz) make enough noise during the sports events in our house. Me, I went to SIL/BIL's house for 49er v. Seahawks Superbowl last year (?)....
I, for one, am just happy to see Nissan ACTIVE at LeMans. It means that the company still has faith in its ability to be competitive.
Don't have to look passed the top LMP2 car engines to know that Nissan is still active and thinks they can be competitive in endurance racing.
The Nissan LMP1 car was out qualified by a Nissan powered LMP2 car. That is kind of embarrassing considering how much additional testing they had with the cars.
Don't get me wrong I want nothing more than to see Nissan be at it again, I have friends that work at Panoz and am just a little sour with Ben Bowlby....
I need to correct one thing, they started where they started because of the 110% rule, their raw times put all three cars at the back of the LMP1 field, but two of the three cars ran in front of all the LMP2 cars.
Audi, Porsche, Toyota, Bentley, Peugeot, Mercedes, etc: they have had similar starts to their development. Knew it was going to be an uphill battle when they didn't make any of the pre-LeMans races.
I heard Nissan was running without the use of their hybrid flywheel system. Did they get it working for qualifying?
The answer to this is NO- time ran out to get the hybrid system functional, so the cars are FWD only.
The lack of pre-season racing makes me wonder about how well this effort was funded. Nissan's PR statements have been they wanted to concentrate on LeMans, but I'm skeptical. To put all your eggs in one basket makes me wonder if the LMP-1 program will even survive to make a second or third season.
The answer to this is NO- time ran out to get the hybrid system functional, so the cars are FWD only.
The lack of pre-season racing makes me wonder about how well this effort was funded. Nissan's PR statements have been they wanted to concentrate on LeMans, but I'm skeptical. To put all your eggs in one basket makes me wonder if the LMP-1 program will even survive to make a second or third season.
Agreed
Decided to read a little about this. Their hybrid system was not functional, and the engine alone is only producing 500-600hp.
I knew before they didn't decide whether the car would be FWD only or AWD. Nevertheless they planned on sending all 1200hp via the front wheels. So without the hybrid system, they are about 400hp down on the other cars, yet still carrying all that weight.
Nissan sure is pushing the idea hard though. There has been 3 nissan LMP ads in the 30 minute pre race. One of the driver/team interviews also said that they are still very much making adjustments and that the fastest lap will likely occur 30 minutes before the end of the race.
^^Actually, that feed is NOT live. The race is over, but the vid shows one of the Nissans being worked on in the garage. Sigh- I hope this hard-working crew got some time off afterwards to congratulate the winning Porsche team. Audi was in the fight as well, but Nissan never was.
Like many others, I'm glad Nissan made the return to LeMans and the top level of sportscar (prototype) racing. But the expectations were high and the end results will bear some heavy scrutiny within Nissan and NISMO. The cost of racing is HIGH and usually only justified if you are winning (or almost winning) in the pro ranks. No bonus points for being the most innovative unless you win. I hope the effort will be refined and continued, but at this point, there are no plans to even run any of the cars the rest of this year. As for the future, it's hard to even speculate...
06-12-2015, 07:08 AM
2015 LeMans GT-R LMP-1 effort
