When we last heard an update on the Nissan GT-R LM Nismo, the car was going to sit out the first two rounds of the World Endurance Championship for further development work. One thing to fix was a front roll hoop that didn't pass the FIA's crash tests. Per Darren Cox in the Q&A today, that item just passed.
When testing the monocoque earlier this month, the front roll hoop just missed by a little bit, but he reassured us that he would retry with a new chassis the next week. Looks like that new chassis was successful!
The_Rusty_Hub asked:
What kinds of redesign work must be done after failing an FIA crash test?
Nissan Global Motorsport Director Darren Cox responded:
Don't tell anyone, but we just passed the re-test of that particular part.
The_Rusty_Hub has been sworn to secrecy on this matter and won't tell a soul, I'm sure, but we're glad to see that the new monocoque design is finally good to go. I'm assuming this means it's good for barrel rolls as FIA tests for race cars are insanely tough, however, I don't recommend trying that with anyone in the car.
That's one less roadblock to getting the new car to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and we can't wait to see how a car that's completely rethought what an LMP1 should be stacks up against its more conventional counterparts.
Now the Nissan LMP1 team just needs to make the rest of it work and get the entire package ready to race. Given that Darren Cox has been answering Q&A questions from more testing, they've still got quite a lot of work ahead of them.
Photo credit: Nissan