Throughout the history of the 24 hours of LeMans, there have been revolutionary cars and experimental cars. The Nissan GT-R LM Nismo LMP1 car was an original prototype with a lot of expectations before the race in 2015 that ended up being very disappointing. It never got a sequel.
Nissan Motor Company and its motorsport division Nismo wanted to make a come-back in the 24 hours of 2015. The Nissan GT-R LM Nismo was designed according to the Le Mans Prototype 1 Hybrid (LMP1-H) regulations of the FIA World Endurance Championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car was unique among Le Mans Prototypes at that time in utilizing a front-mid-engine layout for its engine, as opposed to the rear-mid-engine layout used by almost all other competitors in the category. It was Nissan's first prototype since the R391. The car was styled after the Nissan GT-R road car and shares similar engine and transmission configurations, but its configuration was never seen in a sports car. The GT-R LM Nismo program was by a great marketing strategy announced on 23 May 2014. It made his first public showing in a Nissan advertisement during the Super Bowl, the finals of the NFL between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks on 1 February 2015. This was already a great PR stunt. And the fact that the car was built in the USA was also new; Nissan always had European built cars by TWR and Lola.
It all started in the USA in 2009. The wilful English designer Ben Bowlby designed- asked by team boss Chip Ganassi – the wonderful Delta-Wing for a contest by Indycar looking for a new one-mark chassis. They would later prefer the conservative Dallara chassis. The arrow shaped DeltaWing with its two small front wheels mounted next to each other was immediately adopted by Don Panoz. He gave the design to Dan Gurney’s All American Racers team to turn it into an endurance racer. The engine was delivered by NISMO.
The car made its debut in the 2012 24h Le Mans race as a Garage056 entry as an experimental design entry. Later in the year the car ended fifth in the Petit Le Mans race. After that, Don Panoz would go on to develop the car further with little success.
Bowlby and Nissan went each their separate ways until the Bowly designed ZEOD RC car entered the Garage 56 project in 2014. The car resembled the Delta Wing. Ganassi and Panoz start a legal complaint, but the hybrid-ZEOD with a 1.5L 3 cylinder Nissan engine was at the start. The car did not get far because of a broken gearbox, but it was the first full electrical car that did a whole lap in Le Mans with a top speed of 300 km/h.
This was also the opening for Nissan to return to Le Mans. Ben Bowlby could now design a real LMP1car for 2015 but was briefed not to design an “Audi Copy”. He got ‘carte blanche’. The GT-R LM engine would be the for Nissan designed 3000cc Cosworth twin turbo V6. The engine and the front axle linked gearbox were placed in front of the cockpit, a layout that had not been used in Le Mans prototypes since the Panoz LMP01 Evo in 2003.
Behind the engine and beneath the cockpit he put a kinetic energy recovery system using two flywheels developed by Torotrak, the ‘Flybrid-system’. The flywheels draw energy from use of the front brakes and then dump that energy back to the front wheels via a driveshaft that runs over the top of the combustion engine. The flywheels can also output power to a secondary driveshaft that is connected to a limited-slip differential at the rear of the car that powers the two electric motors located in each rear wheel drum behind the brake discs, allowing the GT-R to be all-wheel drive if required above 100 km/h. The combustion engine generated approximately 500 hp, while the electric system has an additional output of 8MJ good for approximately 750 hp. This was more power than Porsche, Audi and Toyota.
And more. When designing the car, Bowlby observed that the rear end of a Le Mans prototype was limited in size, resulting in poor aerodynamic efficiency, and saw that the front end of such vehicles allowed more freedom, so they thought about making a car with a lot of downforce at the front placing not only the engine but also the radiators and the exhausts in the front. He so created space to construct two large rectangular tunnels from the nose between the engine and the front wheels to the rear. This allowed the airflow to flow freely to the rear, to save more drag. If you stood behind the almost 4 metres long car, you could look through it an see the front part; ingenious!. Using the tunnels required the turbochargers to be positioned above the engine, exhausting the upper portion of the bodywork in front of the windshield. The rear drivetrain was designed without the traditional half-shafts that would be required to traverse the tunnels Bowlby opted instead for a gear system that worked around the tunnels. The suspension geometry consisted of adjustable Penske rear shock absorbers and Öhlins front shock absorbers along with a rear hydraulic anti-roll bar system. With the GT-R LM's weight distribution being heavier at the front and power directed primarily to the front axle, the wheels are offset to balance the car. The tires at the front are 14 inches wide, while the rear tires are just 9 inches wide. Tyres were supplied by Michelin.
The chassis was made from carbon fibre, which helped engineers reduce the car's weight to the minimum limit of 870 kilograms set by the FIA. the ACO setting rules limiting fuel capacity for Le Mans LMP1 hybrids to 68 litres.
But with the obsession of Bowlby for minimal drag lead to the smallest tub dimensions possible. So only place for small drivers. And he opted for gullwing doors. But in all he said he made a “Le Mans – special”designed car.
Nissan publicly announced its GT-R LM program on May 23, 2014. Six months later, drivers began testing the car for the first time at a two-day launch session at the Nissan Technology Center in Stanfield, Arizona. Testing continued through January 2015 at the Circuit of the Americas. Testing resumed in February at Palm Beach International Raceway which saw the GT-R LM perform its first test in night conditions, before traveling to the Michelin Laurens proving grounds in South Carolina later that month for straight-line speed testing. A week of testing at Sebring International Raceway in March ended prematurely after two days due to a breaking of an engine mount. A new chassis adjustment, a MKII version was needed.
Soon in the testing, Browlby saw that the ERS would be an issue. The engine was especially developed for the GT-R LM. It was a unique and new engine. Every megajoule would give an advantage of half a second per lap, but developing a system of maximum 8MJ that could deliver the advantage would require a lot of money and a lot of testing. The best solution was considered to be disengaging the rear drive and developing the rest of the car for Le Mans.
Nissan intended to enter two GT-R LMs in the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) from April 2015, while a third car would be entered at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. By the time of its planned debut at Silverstone, drivers had covered 3,800 kilometres with the GT-R LM in testing, but its first appearance in the championship was delayed until Le Mans because the car twice failed crash tests and was forced to miss the WEC's pre-season test session at the Circuit Paul Ricard. The first crash test ended in failure because the chassis was considerably damaged at the front. Engineers were also ordered to redesign the car's door because the FIA ??decided that they should reinforce the doors, but it failed the first time and the door structure fell apart. Testing resumed in April with four days of endurance racing covering 2,000 kilometres at the NCM Motorsports Park track in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Three chassis were made ready for the 24h race. They had numerous changes and the only purpose for the race was to make as many miles as possible and gather as much of that necessary new data as possible. Reliability issues in initial testing saw the team take the brave decision to turn up at Le Mans without the Flybrid- setup. So the car’s quoted 1250bhp wasn’t actually working at all, so the cars only had 550 bhp at their disposal. There was great fear of a breakdown of the system; it had never worked properly anyway and in Le Mans it was only good for only an extra 2MJ directed only to front wheels recovery. This meant a loss of hybrid power and a failure to compete in the 8MJ class. For the history: Porsche and Toyota used only 6 MJ in their debut year.
The company had already named nine drivers for the team early in 2015. Harry Tincknell, LMP2 class winner at Le Mans in 2014, was joined in the red#22 car by former FIA GT1 2011 Champion Michael Krumm (6 participations) and rookie Alex Buncombe. Former European Le Mans Series champion Olivier Pla was joined by ex-Marussia F1 driver and rookie Max Chilton and Jann Mardenborough in the #23. Super GT champion Tsugio Matsuda, Lucas Ordóñez and Mark Shulzhitskiy drove the blue #21 car.
Without the balancing effect of electric drive on the rear axles, putting the power down was a nightmare for the drivers. The GT-R LM was clearly slower than even the LMP2 class and some of the GT cars on the exit of corners. In qualifying they did not get within the 110% of the fastest cars in their category, so they ended up, thanks to some rule-bending, on the grid behind all the prototypes. At the start, the #23 stayed in the pits. It needed a cleaning of the hydraulic system. Already in the first hours of the race, the Nissan’s tumbled in the standings. The drivers raced very carefully. The drivers complained in the first hours of the race of a lot of understeer and traction problems, in addition to the car being too stiff and suffering when using the kerbs in the corners. There’s more. Without the flywheel hybrid system, providing up to 2g of breaking performance, stopping the car became an instant major problem. A bigger brake package was hastily assembled – but cooling this without ruining that all-important aero was a nut that just couldn’t be cracked. As soon as the car had to slow for any reason, the brakes caught fire. The first disc change took place within the first six hours (the ones that came off promptly melted a hole in the floor), and this became a depressingly routine process throughout the event. Then the cars had numerous gearbox problems, electrical problems, drops in tyre pressure and even lost a wheel.
None of NISMO’s three units managed to finish the race classified, although the #22 did see the chequered flag but without completing the minimum number of laps ( in the pits for 7h56 min) to get classified. The fastest lap in the race for the Nissan was done by Tincknell in 3’35”888, a bit faster than a LMP2 car. The #23 had done 235 laps in total when he had tos stop with a fire starting and the #21 did 116 laps when he lost a wheel. Global director of Nismo, Darren Cox said after the race that he was satisfied with the performance of the car and the drivers.”It is normal that you do not finish your first race when you are and innovator. I am confident that we will be able to decrease the gap to the others.”
The programme however was officially cancelled on 22 December. A second-generation GT-R LM Nismo was designed for 2016, adapted to run a hybrid-electric system, but was never completed before the project ended. Nissan's conclusion following this failure was that the car could not match the performance of its LMP1 rivals of the time, Porsche, Audi and Toyota.
One thing is for sure: the car won the sympathy of the public. This unorthodox design brought again extra colour to the world of motorracing.
