Dear Nissan, Different Doesn't Always Mean Better

I'll be honest, I'm not a huge Nissan fan, but I might be a GTR LMP1 fan.  I'm kind of a sucker for weird, slow, race cars.  While few people would disagree with me that no one is going to confuse the Nissan with any other car in the paddock, some people might be claiming that it is too early to say that the GTR LMP1 is going to get it's lunch money stolen by Audi, Porsche and Toyota.  Those people don't read racing news.

Thing's haven't been going well for Nissan lately.  The exceptional Mulsanne's Corner has been following and speculating on the development of the GTR LMP1 since the beginning of the project.  The latest news from the guys over at Mulsanne's is that Nissan will not be racing either at the WEC season opener at Silverstone, or the following race at Spa.  The reason for this is that Nissan failed their FIA crash test.  Specifically, they need to have the car homologated 30 days before they can race it.  This puts Silverstone completely out of the question, and Spa (if Nissan had chosen to run Spa), extremely difficult.  That means that the car will make it's debut at Le Mans.  In addition to the Nissan's shake down run being the most important race on the calendar, Nissan has limited testing miles under their belt.  According to the cover story in the March issue of Racecar Engineering, Nissan has only 2,000 kilometers of testing on the car, compared to 40,000 kilometers of testing that Toyota had when they debuted their car.  Unconventional car, limited testing, and late debut to the race season, I don't possibly see anything that could go wrong here.

Of course, if the Nissan could live up to the car's original billing, then they still might be a force to be reckoned with.  According to RACER's March cover story however, Nissan has slowly been adjusting everyone's expectations downward.  Originally, Nissan was shooting for 2,000 horse power with all wheel drive (internal combustion engine driving the front wheels and hybrid drive system driving the back wheels).  This has been adjusted downwards to 1,250 horsepower.  Also troubling is that originally the car was supposed to run in the 8MJ hybrid subclass, but Nissan is now anticipating running in the 4MJ or even 2MJ subclass.  The speed comparison of the 2MJ Audi to the 6MJ Toyota and Porsche last year showed that when it comes to hybrid LMP1 cars, you want all the megajoules you can get.  But wait, it gets worse.  Nissan designed the original concept of the car assuming an 8MJ hybrid system driving the rear wheels.  With the smaller hybrid system, Nissan has decided to lighten the car by getting rid of the heavy drivelines that send power to the back wheels and send all of the power to the front wheels.  You read that right.  The GTR LMP1, Nissan's flagship racing car, is front wheel drive.  Just like an Altima.  Nissan claims that they feel they can make this concept work with a combination of high downforce (which is Nissan is to be believed is the car's true strength), and advanced traction control.  Personally I'm still not buying it.  Nissan is asking the front tires to do all of the work, and no matter how advanced the engineering, there are certain laws of physics that Nissan can't change.  

Racecar Engineering reported that the GTR is running sub-two minute lap times at Circuit of the Americas.  Pole time at COTA last year was 1:49.  Depending on what is mean't by "sub 2 minutes" Nissan could either be a few seconds of the pace (still significant), to almost ten seconds off the pace. Either way, they have work to do.

To be fair, lots of cars have significant issues their first year, but with Nissan it seams like the hits just keep on coming. If Nissan can build a car that matches the GTR LMP1's original specifications, they will have a car that is the class of the field.  The real question is can they sort out the car's problems before Nissan decides to cut their losses.