Design and build

The realisation of the Nissan GT-R LM

- SIMON MARSHALL

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 design department