Forward thinking
The small budget could only really work with a compact design team which was open to exploring new ideas
The 2015 Le Mans grid had a paradigm buster LMP1 in Nissan’s GT-R LM, a car that delivered power from its internal combustion unit through the front wheels, and had that ICE in a front mid-engine position. But this did not happen by chance.
Regulations drive design choices and once the optimum lay-out proves itself there is a long period of refining the basic layout, until rules open up new possibilities. LMP1s had been quietly incorporating knowledge over a couple of decades with changes only being made as the ACO and the FIA jigged the regulations, bringing diesels and then hybrids into the fray.
The diesel/petrol equivalency rules were biased towards diesels by the ACO in response to the interests of two of the manufacturers that had been strongly supporting the series, Peugeot and Audi. The associated hybrid regulations also gave the amount of energy to be deployed by the KERS system, fixed to a maximum of 8MJ. After the first win by Audi with a hybrid, using energy harvested in the front axle and deployed to the front of the car, the gains perceived by other manufacturers led them to pressure the FIA/ACO to limit when it could be used, it being fixed at above 120km/h.
Nissan had already taken an innovative interpretation of the new Garage 56 rules in 2012, by building the Nissan Deltawing as an exercise in out-of-the-box thinking on how to produce a fast, efficient car with pure physics, and not limited by the regulations.
The Zeod was a continuation of that concept, but with added energy recovery with a hybrid electric drivetrain using lithium ion battery packs and an ultra-efficient engine, in which a battery was charged by the ICE and kinetic energy was harvested under braking, doing the first 12 laps of a stint with the ICE unit and deploying the stored energy for the final lap. This led to the first all-electric lap at Le Mans, reaching a speed above 300km/h.
The technical and commercial results due to the publicity returns for these limited projects, plus a couple of new rules, featured in the decision by Nissan to enter the WEC to compete against the cars already there: Audi, Toyota and the new contender, Porsche.
Le Mans return
The same design group that had worked on the
