Design and build
Ricardo Divila’s first article about the Nissan GT-R LM was the first of three planned to outline the audacious concept, revealing the promise of performance, the complexities involved and the compromises made.
Divila, known to us as ‘the advisor’, was assigned to the programme by Nissan, and held the key to the green light for this project (as he had for Ben Bowlby’s previous Nissan projects, DeltaWing and Zeod).
He was the eminent racing enthusiast, with a long devotion to Nissan in particular. He exuded confidence in his racing business, which told of many years working trackside with drivers, mechanics and engineers in a calm, level-headed manner. He had his hand in all elements of the GT-R LM project, but was recently called by a higher power, and so I will carry the baton for this second article covering the design and build of the car.
The exploitation of the open front downforce regulations, paired with the forward weight bias of a front engine, the necessity to harvest under braking at the front, and the plan to deploy the ERS at the rear was, in theory, a perfect plan. But you know what they say, ‘In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they’re not.’ We could have produced a winner, but so many things had to be invented and executed perfectly for the whole project to work.
It has been well documented that various components contributed to the difficulties in birth, testing and racing. But the ultimate responsibility for the unravelling of the project was the new design concept crashing into the deadline for the 2015 Le Mans race.
The ultimate responsibility for the unravelling of the project was the new design concept crashing into the deadline for the 2015 Le Mans race
The design department
I got the call from Ben about the LMP1 project in February 2014, 16 months ahead of the Le Mans race. The concept wasn’t revealed to me until I agreed to join the project and joined Zack Eakin (chief engineer) over dinner in Santa Ana, California. Imagine my surprise when I was told we were making an LMP1, but with front engine, front-wheel drive. Strangely, it still fitted the rule book, and besides, it gave me the chance to return to Dan Gurney’s All American Racers [AAR] headquarters for the design and build.
The design team was larger than for the DeltaWing, but still very small for an LMP1 outfit, plus we had to expand into the ever-increasing (as we found) electronic and data demands of the LMP1 class.
Some design elements would bog us down due to the unique nature of the project. These things lingered on the drawing board and sucked up valuable time. New concepts, design, manfacturing and testing, all with significant time line and budget risk.
At times I wondered why we were pursuing this
