Nissan has confirmed its return in the LM P1 category next season. The Japanese manufacturer will take on Audi, Porsche and Toyota in next year’s Le Mans 24 Hours and in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
During an extraordinary press conference in London yesterday, Friday 23rd May, Andy Palmer, Nissan’s Chief Planning Office & Executive Vice-President Soichi Miyatani, Nismo President and Darren Cox Nissan marketing and sales manager in the company of Pierre Fillon, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest President, announced Nissan’s comeback in 2015.
Next season the manufacturer will enter two Nissan GT-R LM NISMOs in the LM P1 category in the Le Mans 24 Hours and also in the full FIA World Endurance Championship of which the ACO is the organiser and promoter.
The Renault-Nissan alliance, the fourth biggest car manufacturer in the world, will come to battle for victory in the overall classification at Le Mans with the two world leaders in the car market, Toyota and the VAG Group represented by Audi and Porsche.
This prestigious return, further proof of the attraction of endurance racing which the ACO has been promoting since 1923 with the creation of the Le Mans 24 Hours, shows an interest that is gaining ground among the major manufacturers in the car industry thanks to the new technical regulations in the blue riband category, Le Mans Prototypes 1 – LM P1.
Nissan entered for Le Mans for the first time in 1986 and came back until 1999 apart from a short 3-year break between 1991-1993. In 2011, the make returned as an engine supplier in the LM P2 category (two category victories in 2011 and 2013) and then supported the DeltaWing project in 2012 before entering its ZEOD in the context of the 56th garage this year.
There’s no doubt that the amazing-looking ZEOD, which will race at Le Mans on 14-15 June outside the overall classification, prefigures the innovative technical solutions that Nissan will employ on its future Nissan GT-R NISMO.