Nissan has been a busy company lately, both with their ongoing GT Academy program as well as their crazy World Endurance Championship LMP1 racer, the debut of which has been pushed back to the 24 Hours of Le Mans. We'll let you ask what's going on with that live for the next hour or so with Nismo head Darren Cox.
Cox serves as Global Motorsport Director for Nissan, and the folks at Nismo have been responsible for the most radically different LMP1-class race car we've seen in years. Only problem: that completely new design needs a lot of extra work to get it up to speed and ready for Le Mans.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans, of course, is the biggest event on WEC's schedule, so they're focusing their prototype efforts on not screwing up Le Mans. They're furiously working on that now, testing until they get it all in working order.
This focus on Le Mans certainly hasn't kept Nissan from going on to more interesting and wonderful projects in racing. In addition to completely rethinking LMP1 design, Nissan has continued to grow its GT Academy program. Not only will GT Academy grads be racing in that top LMP1 class at Le Mans, but they've just extended the program over to the Philippines. Something tells me that won't be the final stop in Nissan's quest to develop talent out of astonishingly good Gran Turismo racers.
That's a whole lot of Nismo goin' on. Want to know specifics? Curious as to what cool tech might be coming to Nismo-badged Nissans you can buy in the future? We've got the man who would know here for the next hour as he takes a break from yet more tests on the LMP1. Ask away!
[Update: Darren Cox had to go, but according to his sign-off post, he'll be answering more questions on the @NISMO Twitter account tomorrow.]
Photo credit: Nissan