World Endurance Championship

Nissan quits World Endurance Championship

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  • #310746

    With Christmas three days away, now is the time to bury bad story. And so Nissan has made the not-entirely-unexpected announcement that it won’t be returning to the World Endurance Championship next year:

    Today, Nissan announced that it will withdraw its LMP1 entry from the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship.

    Nissan entered LMP1 in the 2015 season with an innovative new, and bold concept, with the ambition to compete at the front of the field.

    The teams worked diligently to bring the vehicles up to the desired performance levels. However, the company concluded that the program would not be able to reach its ambitions and decided to focus on developing its longer term racing strategies.

    Racing is a core part of the Nissan DNA, and the company has a proud history of innovating to win. Nissan’s commitment to motorsports remains strong, as evidenced by its victorious track record in the 2015 season – from achieving the overall winner of Super GT two years in a row in Japan, to winning the Blancpain Endurance Pro Class, Bathurst 12hr race with the GT-R GT3. Nissan will continue its support of WEC through its various engine programs including recent introduction of LMP3 engine.

    Nissan’s trio of unconventional front-wheel-drive GT-R LMs were a long way off the pace in their sole appearance at Le Mans this year. Only one was still running at the end, and that was chiefly as a PR exercise as it spent a large amount of time in the garage and was over 150 laps down on the winners at the end.

    #310748

    Well, FF is only works in rally & touring car series.
    I wonder if this is related with Renault returns to F1..?

    #310751
    Djangles LeVaughn
    Participant

    Disappointing, but unsurprising news. All the PR exercising and hype amounts to nothing if the end product fails to deliver.

    #310752

    Chilton trying to put a positive spin on things:

    #310753
    David-A
    Participant

    Go to waist? Chilton doesn’t look like he’s taken up any kind of diet.

    #310761

    That typo..

    BTW, to make it even better (from racer.com)

    The Japanese manufacturer alerted employees via e-mail Tuesday morning the Indianapolis-based front-engine GT-R LM NISMO P1 hybrid program has been shuttered. Most employees were on holiday at the time, and according to one team source, those attempting to enter the building found access codes had changed and were locked out.

    Program leaders Ben Bowlby and Chris Mower were then tasked with calling each employee directly as many, according to a source, were not monitoring work email and learned about their firings via the Internet.

    #310762
    JackySteeg
    Participant

    It is a crying shame that after all that build up, with the Superbowl commercial, the show car outside football stadiums, and the plethora of videos that it has all come to an end so soon, and so unspectacularly. At first it was exciting because it was a completely fresh approach to motorsport; I fear now that Nissan has proven the doubters right and will put off any manufacturers from trying anything so different in the future. I do wonder how good the car could have been without any of the problems it suffered at Le Mans, but obviously the problems are too big to be worth solving.

    Spare a thought for the likes of Matsuda and Krumm — they deserved a top LMP1 seat at Le Mans and 2015 was probably their final chance.

    #310843
    R.J. O’Connell
    Participant

    Spare a thought also for Jann Mardenborough and Harry Tincknell, who should be trading Le Mans titles in the years to come, but now have uncertain plans going into 2016.

    #330673

    Just saw this on Twitter:

    #330674
    Djangles LeVaughn
    Participant

    Rightfully where it belongs!

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