Nissan LMP1 Discussion

[porsche91722]

This is what happens when you put marketing people in charge of a project like this. I feel sorry for all the workers involved, and by that I mean all the backroom people who have worked their arses off, trying to turn this lemon into a real, functional race car. I doubt very much that they would have left the building with anything more than their bare entitlements, unlike some of the frontmen, who steered this Titanic like project from the beginning.
Unfortunately, as we all know, in motorsport, it isn't the first time this type of thing has happened and it won't be the last.

[YorkshireLad]

What will happen to the chassis, engines, workshops etc?

Doubt these will be in a Nissan museum haha!

I feel sorry for the staff just before the holidays!

[wolfhound]

The Nissan LMP 1 project that proves the rule the more hot air produced the bigger the failure on track.

I am wondering about how the Nissan / Renault situation is evolving. Renault was on the point of pulling out of F1 a couple of weeks ago. Could their decision have anything to do with Nissan pulling out of LMP1 as in which project got priority?

I would love to see how a proper front engined LMP car would compare with what is a conventional layout as there are aspects to the Nissan that did work. For example it was very quick in a straight line but was this down to a lack of downforce or those tunnels running through the car?

Originally Posted by CTD

All Nissan Japan seems to have done is fund the project and supply the only working part of the program, the Engine.

I thought the engine was built by Cosworth or is my memory fooling me.

[Coach Ep]

Originally Posted by CTD

Even though you should never wish anyone ill, I hope that the US based Nissan Motorsport will be closed, and any future Nissan LM projects, will be run from NISMO Japan.

I sincerely hope that Nissan accepts this defeat, and sees it almost as a "con", and takes it as a challenge to return to Le Mans and prove that Nissan can make a proper LMP to challenge for the Le Mans win.

Your 'wish' seems to have become true:
"Members of the Indianapolis-based team were notified of the news Tuesday morning, and were forced to hand in their credentials and any property of Nissan immediately. Security access codes were changed and it was the end of the road." (from http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/d...boom-then-bust)

That certainly sounds like the team members have lost their jobs - never a good thing no matter what your opinions are about certain race teams and their (non) performances...

I doubt we'll see Nissan back in prototype racing any time soon - or ever for that matter! It took them almost 15 years to return for this project, this failure will leave a giant scar and the humiliation by Japanese standards is enormous - we might never see a Nissan prototype racing in anger again.

[DistortedSmile]

Disgraceful and beyond embarrassing.

Originally Posted by TF110

Their Super GT success should be looked at.

Agreed, if they ever come back, put the Super GT people in charge.

[CTD]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

I thought the engine was built by Cosworth or is my memory fooling me.

It was co-developed by Nissan and Cosworth, I seem to remember that this was NISMO Japan who was the Nissan part, and not the American based team.

Originally Posted by Coach Ep

Your 'wish' seems to have become true:
"Members of the Indianapolis-based team were notified of the news Tuesday morning, and were forced to hand in their credentials and any property of Nissan immediately. Security access codes were changed and it was the end of the road." (from http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/d...boom-then-bust)

That certainly sounds like the team members have lost their jobs - never a good thing no matter what your opinions are about certain race teams and their (non) performances...

I doubt we'll see Nissan back in prototype racing any time soon - or ever for that matter! It took them almost 15 years to return for this project, this failure will leave a giant scar and the humiliation by Japanese standards is enormous - we might never see a Nissan prototype racing in anger again.

I'm really sorry to hear that they lost their jobs, especially in the holiday season. I wish them the best.
Sadly, most of the people who worked on the technical aspects of the car would know that this where coming, better than anyone else. Otherwise they were simply fooling themselves.

I'm curious to what Radio Le Mans, especially Hindhaugh, has to say about this, considering his enthusiasm towards the project!

[Coach Ep]

Originally Posted by CTD

I'm really sorry to hear that they lost their jobs, especially in the holiday season. I wish them the best.
Sadly, most of the people who worked on the technical aspects of the car would know that this where coming, better than anyone else. Otherwise they were simply fooling themselves.

Agreed. Here's more confirmation from Marshall Pruett's spot on summary:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorspo...s-over-e-mail/

Every disaster has a 'silver lining' I guess and in this case it could be the strenghtening of US (prototype) racing in the near future with the immediate availability of a big group of very hard working engineers and mechanics.

[Deleted]

Deltawing - Borrowed controversy technology ad campaign
ZEOD - Garbage failure
GT-R P1 - The culmination on frustration

The only good thing about this particular car - and which MAYBE brings it above the two G56 showups - was that it showed how immensely different design you can get out on the actual regulations. That was cool. I was kinda exccited at start, certainly around Super Bowl. Everything else was dealt wrong... horrendous and insulting PR obviously being the worst aspect on all

The P2 (Zytek association) engine has been the only useful physical product they've had at LM this decade. And even that, as freezed costcap thing, is not so special...

All people will remember on AMR ONE is how crap that chassis+enginewas. But they didn't BS people with it or make fuzz out on it. And that is why this will overtake AMR-One as the most failed LM project of the century, so far.

[Acid09]

Originally Posted by Coach Ep

Agreed. Here's more confirmation from Marshall Pruett's spot on summary:

http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorspo...s-over-e-mail/

Every disaster has a 'silver lining' I guess and in this case it could be the strenghtening of US (prototype) racing in the near future with the immediate availability of a big group of very hard working engineers and mechanics.

Geez, there's some disturbing stuff in there. From the way the project cancelation was handled to the quotes about the last test.

This was an unfixable mess from start to finish.

[YorkshireLad]

It did keep us all talking for over a year though! This thread has been one of the most busy on TT.

[Deleted]

Mhmhm... fan-engagement and new media by DC will endure forever... ...
https://mobile.twitter.com/pimpimma/...25128934088704

[isynge]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Mhmhm... fan-engagement and new media by DC will endure forever... ...
https://mobile.twitter.com/pimpimma/...25128934088704

We can carp, and I'm one who believes that the collapse of the Nissan LMP1 effort has done huge damage to the brand, but their approach in the run up to June was different and engaged people successfully. They got column inches, and even to the harder core fans at the track, wheeling out the show cars and letting people sit in them sent a hugely powerful message - the sort that other teams could usefully emulate.

Obviously this marketing approach needed to be matched by something more tangible on track - that it wasn't killed the project, but I do hope that the Nissan failure doesn't taint efforts to try and make LMP projects more marketing friendly and thus more commercially viable.

[Lagunaseca_4life]

The delta wing,Zeod,and now the gt-r lm.what a joke,quite the messy joke Nismo has made of themselves and Nissan.

They would of been better off and should of built a gte gt-r.

[TF110]

Autosport has a short on why Nissan withdrew.

[Rcz]

I wonder what happens to the car now? I hope it dosen't get destroyed to protect company secrets or some other BS.


Maybe somebody will buy it and race it in IMSA. They allow the DW there so why not.

[bentley speed 8]

Maybe some collector will buy the cars (if Nissan is willing to sell them that is.) Despite being a failure, it's still the only modern FWD LMP1 car.
But yeah, I don't think they will be in any Nissan museum...

[TF110]

According to the above Autosport story, there's no decision yet on whether they go ahead with the redesigned 2016 car at a later date. The turnover was too short to redo the car and make the 2016 season. I don't see how they will race again with the team being let go, unless it's done at a new location. There's only a sliver of hope for it to race again.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Victor_RO

And even the AMR-One raced twice. Four times if you count its "descendants".

And one of those descendants was the DeltaWing, which is what started this Nissan project anyway. Somebody told Ben he was a genius for making an illegal car go slowly, so he sold that idea to Nissan and here we are. Turns out that making legal cars go quickly is a bit harder.

I'm gutted to see Nissan pull out, because who doesn't want to see a 4 way battle for Le Mans? But the car was further off the pace than the Lavaggi LS01. I really hope they return in 17 or 18 with a better made car.

[helgi]

A second thought came as an aftershock - it's really frustrating that marketing side of sports involvement was so great and has totally destroyed all the engineering efforts. Now, after some "different" attempts, lots of scepticism go to any fresh idea. Who really knows if that aero would someday work at 100%? For an engineer it was a fine piece of alternative thinking of some sort. It didn't need that much PR - just put those 15 mln not in advertising but into testing! And this underlines the question: what was really desirable by bosses - some media boom or sports achievements. It could have brought diversity, testing ground for some F1 components as it was in 70's - all that could help to complete the puzzle of modern high profile motorsport that is divided absolutely artificially, synthetically into different types of show. It could generate a kind of mutualism of some sort. But it didn't work out.

[pederb]

Im just waiting for Ford to cancel thier GTE program a head of time

[LC2guy]

Apart from the Cosworth ICE, this effort has been a joke from beginning to end. It'll take some time for Nissan to recover from this embarrassment.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

And one of those descendants was the DeltaWing, which is what started this Nissan project anyway. Somebody told Ben he was a genius for making an illegal car go slowly, so he sold that idea to Nissan and here we are. Turns out that making legal cars go quickly is a bit harder.

The Delta Wing was quick enough to take 5th overall in it's second race. And to outrun (briefly) LMP1 cars in the ALMS.

I'll never understand why people so consistently refuse to give the DeltaWing the credit it deserves.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by FormulaFox

The Delta Wing was quick enough to take 5th overall in it's second race. And to outrun (briefly) LMP1 cars in the ALMS.

I'll never understand why people so consistently refuse to give the DeltaWing the credit it deserves.

5th sounds good. Behind all but 1 P2 car doesn't sound as good. The only thing this brand new, supposedly revolutionary car (which didn't comply to the rules) with works backing did was beat some private cars based on a chassis 5 years older than it.

Anyone can build a revolutionary car outside the rules. What happens when they tried to adapt it to a car that plays by the same rules as everyone else? The LMP1 happened.

Shame, because Nissan talked the talk and it was going to be a great return to a 4 way battle for overall victory. The loss of Nissan will hurt more with Porsche and Audi moving down to 2 cars each.

[Sodemo]

I'm no designer, but to me the whole FWD idea seemed flawed from the start. Not surprised they have pulled out, I guess they were just delaying the inevitable.

[Pandemonium]

Nissan you piece of crap. If thos company disappeared it woudld be for the better. Well this is some medicine for thos Nismo supporters. Car made by Ikea has a better chance.