“It’s going to be a long, tough week for everyone.”
That was Nissan’s Global Motorsport Chief Darren Cox’s assessment of the prospects for the Nissan ZEOD RC’s Garage 56 programme at Le Mans.
The car scrutineered on Sunday is a brand new machine, with the car seen at the Test Day now testing, albeit with plenty of weather interruption, in the UK.
“We are changing things in response to that testing all the time. The team is working flat out and we are even getting a third different type of battery delivered this week. They will arrive on Thursday and we’ll decide then whether the results show that they’ll be on the car for the race.”
In answer to a question about the sheer pace of technological advancement involved in the concept of the car, Darren took a moment to think. “I think it’s fair to say that this car would not have even been possible – let alone even remotely competitive – as recently as just a year ago. The pace in these technologies is astonishing.”
And the prospects for the race?
“We are being entirely realistic. This is cutting-edge stuff and to get the car to the end is gong to be very, very tough. We will go for our first try at a zero-emissions lap in the final Thursday session and I hope we’ll get to see during practice what the top speed is too. Either way, whatever happens, we will learn an awful lot about this technology, and that will help fed back into our future road cars.
“That’s a key part of the way forward. I heard someone say recently that we are now transferring technology from road cars to race cars and that just seems wrong to me. Racing for me has always been about the fascination and the progress of innovation and these regulations give us a real opportunity to exploit that.
“It’s not just the power plants either, the ZEOD RC is the first car here for I don’t know how many years that doesn’t have wing mirrors. Instead we have the very excellent rear camera and warning system from Bosch that was fitted here for the first time last year on the Corvettes. Honestly, it is so good I don’t know why everyone doesn’t have it [they nearly did – DSC believes there was a move to mandate the system before the 2014 season].
“The LMP1 programme will be taking on board several aspects of what we learn here, and in a way it’s nice to be able to step away from that this week and concentrate on something else for a few days.
“There will be the usual mix of the unexpected and some things we have done before for the fans here. One of the latest is ‘NISMO-Cam’, an online TV camera running along pitlane on a wire above the garages – we’ve even covered the camera with a model of a GT-R!”
That should feature on the NISMO TV service which will again be broadcasting on NISMO’s You Tube channel for a full 26 hours on race day.
GG
