Nissan withdraws from the WEC for 2015
After a catastrophic 24 Hours of Le Mans, Nissan has decided to cut their losses for 2015 and will not participate in the rest of the 2015 championship. The aim is to come back next year with a car free of reliability issues.
The time for decisions has arrived at Nissan, and it is unequivocal: the three Nissan LMP1 cars will no longer be seen in races during the current season. Le Mans was their only race of the year, and the outcome was less than glorious: none of the cars qualified, only one finished, and it was still unclassified. The race was notably plagued by numerous technical issues, including the inability to operate its energy recovery system. As a result, the three cars could only use their combustion engines, which explains the 20-second gap per lap compared to the Toyota, Audi, and Porsche cars.
However, Darren Cox, Nismo’s marketing director, continued his innovation-oriented marketing speech: « We’ve said it before, but innovation hurts. We have an LMP1 that is very different from other race cars because we want to continue driving innovation in motorsports. The beauty of this program is that people support us and want to see us succeed. It has shown us once again that people want something different in motorsport, and it gives us even more motivation to make our LMP1 competitive. »
However, the rest of the statement is much more cautious as the team specifies that the return to WEC depended on the progress made by the package. With a 20-second per lap delay, it can at least be said that the potential for improvement is enormous…
