End game
‘Nissan had stipulated that we had to have three cars at Le Mans, and we could not let them down’
By mid-May of 2015 time had pretty much run out on the test and development programme for the Nissan GT-R LM, and the team moved from Indianapolis to a temporary home at the Silverstone circuit in the UK to complete its preparations for Le Mans.
Then, late in May, all three cars were taken to Le Mans. The first garage on the north end of the pit straight gave us an extra external working area to keep the tyres, plus a trailer given over to the machining and fabrication shop for essential maintenance. We knew we were in for a busy month.
Our driver line-up had been confirmed by now. Car 21 was to be driven by Lucas Ordonez, Tsugio Matsuda and Mark Shulzhitskiy; car 22 by Michael Krumm, Harry Tincknell and Alex Buncombe; car 23 by Max Chilton, Jann Mardenborough and Olivier Pla.
By this stage we were also still modifying parts, drawing them on CAD in the garage at Le Mans and getting them made. The ACO insisted that we move the mirrors outboard by 100mm and so mountings were modelled and emailed to CRP in Italy, who rapid prototyped them using their Windform material. One of our engineers then flew to Italy, received them at the airport and flew straight back again. By now, Brian Oeters (design and composites engineer) and I were knee deep in Jabroc (wood laminate) shavings from having to re-profile the chamfers on the underbody skids to pass scrutineering. Three cars, three sets of skids, equalled plenty of dust.
Testing times
There are two schools of thought when it comes to preparation; and . We were the latter, and even that was stretching it a bit. But once we had settled into our new home at Le Mans we elected to take part in a private test day on May 31. Interested parties shared the cost of the Bugatti circuit for a shakedown before the full circuit was opened. It was the first time that the opposition had seen ‘Godzilla’ in the flesh, but it was also a big deal for the team.
