MOTORSPORT: Nissan's Le Mans car stalls again

Nissan’s radical and troubled sports car, the GT-R LM NISMO, won’t race again this year.

The front-engined prototype has competed in only one round of the World Endurance Championship – the Le Mans 24-Hour in June – and that was without its Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS).

Only one of three GT-R LMs in the French classic was running at the finish, but it had been out of action for a third of the event.

Nissan had opted to skip the first two WEC rounds in favour of testing, then announced it would miss three races after Le Mans, and now it will be absent from the final two – the next of them at Fuji in Japan this weekend.

It has been testing recently at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas and development will continue in the US.

Nissan’s director of vehicle project management in Mexico, Michael Carcamo, has joined the project’s management team to allow Ben Bowlby to concentrate on improving his daring design.

“The challenge that we took on was a monumental task,” Carcamo said.

“We have to learn all of the dynamics of this new vehicle and all the performance tuning, so it takes a long time to find the sweet spot of performance.

“We recognise that challenge and we’ve added the resources and infrastructure behind the program to try and bring it to that next level.”

NISMO president Shoichi Miyatani said: "We are committed to competing at the highest level and we are not happy when we are not winning.

“Let's not forget that while we have been pushing forward with the LMP1 challenge we have won the Blancpain Pro Cup Drivers title in Europe with the Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 and are on target for another great year of success in GT500 in Japan.

“Racing is a vital part of our DNA and we will work to get this right.”

The Project Brabham crowdfunding scheme launched last year raised about US$450,000 but many millions will be needed to compete in the targeted second tier of Le Mans prototypes.

“We are now pretty set on the business plan and are comfortable talking to investors,” the British-based youngest son of Australia’s late triple F1 world champion said.

“I’m trying to build something quite big here, so it needs a solid foundation and that’s what we’ve been doing behind the scenes.

"The target is LMP2 in WEC in 2016.

“Obviously, the longer it goes the tighter it is to make the first race (at Britain’s Silverstone circuit in mid-April), but if we can enter the championship after the first couple of races then I can live with that as long as it is done properly.

“I don't want to rush it. I've been around long enough to know that, if you go into a season half-cocked, you never recover.
“I want to take my time, do the testing and get the team to the point where we feel we can go there and do a good job.”