The sad news was announced by Nissan themselves today, as the company is killing the bold GT-R LM Nismo race car after its discouraging results of the previous year.
“The teams worked diligently to bring the vehicles up to the desired performance levels,” said Nissan in their statement. “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”.
The innovative GT-R LM Nismo race car was a brave technical exercise for the Japanese company but the FWD front-engined hybrid architecture never really worked in order to give Nissan the necessary speed and pace to compete with the leading teams in the WEC and Le Mans races.
To make things worse, R&T reports that Nissan practically fired the employees of the LMP1 program by e-mail, with many of them on vacation for the holidays. The ones who turned up for work Tuesday morning faced a very unpleasant surprise.
It’s definitely a very sad end to a very ambitious racing program with Nissan stating that they will continue their support in the WEC via its various engine programs, including their new LMP3 engine.
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