Nissan’s Le Mans Success
 Story

The annual spectacular that is the 24 hours of Le Mans has just taken place. Audi were dethroned by Porsche, 2 F1 driver occupied teams finished 1^st and 2^nd, and an actor made it onto the podium in the form of Patrick Dempsey. There were closely fought battles through the GT field, a welcome return of the SRT Viper, and an unfortunate 23^rd hour retirement from a leading Aston Martin. It was an eventful race, but there was one particular talking point which got a lot of attention.

Nissan returned to Le Mans this year with their Nismo GTR LMP1 making Nissan’s first top fleet Le Mans car since the R390 in the late 90’s. It was a completely “Against the grain” design, in the fact that it was a front-engine, front wheel drive configuration. I’ll come back to the front wheel drive part shortly.

As the chequered flag dropped 2 of the Nissan entries had retired, and the remaining car was the last place finisher overall. As a result, Nissan has received a lot of criticism calling their Le Mans return embarrassing and a failure. However, I am here to say that Nissan’s race was definitely a success for the team.

Instead of following the trend, Nissan decided to try something completely different, and as a result encountered a string of issues most teams will never have to deal with which delayed their testing. They were also on an incredibly tight deadline in motorsports terms meaning that Le Mans, one of the most challenging races in history, was the cars first ever race. 1 car finished, another retired very late in the race, on the car’s racing debut at an event where even long established, factory backed cars can have issues, and that is an incredible feat.

Okay, it didn’t in any competitive position, but when you consider everything that Nissan has done, and the fact they had to carry a lot of dead weight equipment they couldn’t use, while running less than 50% power, they did a great job to finish at all. I look forward to seeing them back in 2016 with all systems dialled in and working.

Regarding the “Front wheel drive”, in its Le Mans spec, it did only power the front wheels with around 600bhp. However, when the hybrid system is used, it provides an extra 1000bhp to the rear wheels. I know that the engine technically only powers the front wheels, but when the majority of power is delivered to the rear wheels, surely this makes the car a rear biased 4 wheel drive.

There are some four wheel drive road cars which often only drive the front wheels, and only power the rear wheels when there is a lack of grip or it needs to get more power to the road, yet these are not “Front wheel drive” cars, despite the fact the rear wheels are mostly used to assist the front. To me, Nissan is using a similar concept in that the front may be permanently driven, but the instant that the rear wheels receive any driving power, the car can no longer be classified as “Front wheel drive”, as they have made the most of advertising it as.

Hopefully they drop this way of marketing and tell it as it is, as a true four wheel drive car in the same way that Audi market theirs as a Quattro, and here’s hoping that they stick with the GTR LMP1, get their systems dialled in, and show us what they can really do in 2016.