The Heterodox GT-R LM Nismo Endurance Racer

Cool picture. I would never have guessed that the engine was longitudal like that.

What sort of sensor would be used like that on the ride height drop link? Strain gauge maybe? There's a sensor hidden on the drop link under some heat shrink, another snaking down into the upright, and a 3rd sensor that looks like perhaps a hall effect  bolted on above that.

Probably a strain gauge as you say. The bolted rectangle at the top could be an accelerometer. There is also a rotary (potentiometer?) on the inboard end of the rocker.

Jay Leno's Garage takes a (naturally, non technical) look at the GT-R LM-

Looks like the RWD option is hanging on by a thread.  How much lighter/more aero can the conventional brakes be with significant braking torques being fed into the flywheel?  The youngest driver is a good story as well. I really like that you can torque vector the steered axle and the axle with the most DF too, I wonder how that might alter the forces acting on the front tires vs. pure slip angle steering. Also both the working rpms and rated output for the V6 given in the video are ridiculously tame--like an understressed street car almost.  This is designed with fuel consumption right up near the top of the priority list.

Hard to tell from this screen shot of the tunnel from the Leno video but it looks like a dummy driveshaft is still in place and the novel short arm suspension may not be. But this isn't a runner car, so that all might mean zip. 

Anyway, I f-ing love this car.

 

I really like that you can torque vector the steered axle and the axle with the most DF too, I wonder how that might alter the forces acting on the front tires vs. pure slip angle steering.

I'm a big fan of torque vectoring too. One immediately thinks of the yaw moment it can generate to help with transients like getting the car rotating at turn-in and the agility benefits in tight and twisty bits.

For these guys I am betting, the ability to balance the traction-circle vectors on the driven wheels is equally important. Those front tyres are doing a lot of work and torque vectoring allows the engineers to dial the torque to each wheel during cornering in proportion to the cornering load of that tyre. This means both front tyres have their force vector pointing in the same direction - same lateral slip angle and the same longitudinal slip ratio. This maximises grip and minimises wear.

 

Anyway, I f-ing love this car.

Although at the moment, it isn't doing even a fraction of what it said on the box.  They can't get the ERS to work at all apparently, so its a 500bhp FWD car.  Still, people also love the Trabant even if that is a truly dreadful car.

It's more like a front steer Dymaxion though really, undeveloped.  If it works, it'll be using tech Bucky Fuller didn't have at hand.

Short non-technical video on the Michelin tires featuring our own RDV.

The Nissans have qualified 12th, 21st and 31st for Le Mans, 22s, 25s and 29s off pole time!

The fastest LMP2, in 11th, was 0.5s faster than the fastest Nissan.

The fastest GTE-Pro was 9s slower than the slowest Nissan.

http://www.autosport...t.php/id/119413

Edited by Wuzak, 11 June 2015 - 02:27.

Well it won't be the car.....so that means the drivers aren't up to snuff....?

Told you it would suck at qualifier. But the stints should be longer before refuel so i would be surprised if it gets any competition from the lower classes in the race.

Edited by MatsNorway, 11 June 2015 - 07:16.

Just spend obscene amounts of money to build a car this is hardly on the pace. That clip above hilights the money. Special tyres to make a bad car competitive. I wonder how much it is costing Michelin to develop the tyres, and is Nissan paying?

Most pro categories this sort of car would never happen, as the tyres are basically a control item in construction and width. Even with basically free tyres.

BTCC is a minority and from what I read the front drivers get more freedoms though not width and construction. Though at a guess compounds,,hard front very soft rear.

Whatever the technology and money spent it is still lipstick on a pig!

Front drive road cars are generally functional as mechanised transport. Most manufacturers have the things ok to drive but as I said. Mechanised Transport

That's embarrassing.

Some folks in the Racing Comments thread mentioned it not having its KERS working but it's still carrying it around? Huh?

The guy who insists more than a 100 years of race car evolution is wrong will be proven wrong again?

The current situation is this: you have a car designed to be four wheel drive, but the rear wheel drive system isn't working (KERS).  So not only do you have a car that is massively down on power (KERS only powers the rears), but now it is front drive only.

I'll wait to pass judgement on the concept until after they get the KERS setup working.

That's embarrassing.

 

Some folks in the Racing Comments thread mentioned it not having its KERS working but it's still carrying it around? Huh?

From what I've read this year will be just a test for Nissan, with a handiccaped car.

They are in the 8MJ category but they had problems  managing the power delivery from the dual flywheel kers so they drop it down to 2MJ (but it seems they cannot step down from the 8MJ category now).

With only 2MJ at disposal there were no benefits in using the rear drive due to its weight and complexity so they went fromt drive only.

Next year we should see a full functioning (pseudo 4WD )Nissan, thou they don't know if they will keep the flywheel kers or change to batteries.

That's embarrassing.

 

Some folks in the Racing Comments thread mentioned it not having its KERS working but it's still carrying it around? Huh?

They are entered in the PMP1 Hybrid class, so it has to be a hybrid - even if it doesn't work.  Anyway, if they took the hybrid kit off, they would still have to add ballast to meet the class minimum weight limit.  Only Deltawing is allowed to run at half the weight of everyone else!

If the ERS was working at 2MJ, or at the planned 8MJ, how much faster would they be?   And how come Nissan with all their resources can't make the ERS work at all.  That's pretty damning for a company that is blanket advertising on Eurosport TV about their 'Innovation with Excellence' or whatever their strapline is.

Edited by BRG, 11 June 2015 - 18:27.

Is it true that it is a mechanical flywheel system, with driveshafts to the front and rear axles?

If so, why wouldn't they use MGUs and electrically driven flywheels?

 That's pretty damning for a company that is blanket advertising on Eurosport TV about their 'Innovation with Excellence' or whatever their strapline is.

They seem to be getting a big into a big strap-on.

So the wash up is that they made fools of themselves. Very slow car and not reliable. The best car was not classified at 154 laps adrift.

Maybe IF they had done more testing the car would only be 10 sec off the pace, and just maybe more reliable too.

As has been said too, lose a wheel on a balanced car and you limp back on 3 wheels, a front driver just stays there! 

Millions of dollars for a car about the same pace as priveatly run Vettes and Porcshes. Which are road car based and run at 5% of the cost.

Aston and Toymota hardly distinguished themselves either.

A new car that is somewhere near the pace and fails is 'well we can do better' .But the three mentioned were slow, at least the Toyota finished with a moderate pace. A racing Prius!

I'm glad we didn't have the internet in previous decades of racing.

I seriously doubt that given your 10 posts a day average over 16 years! on autosport forum alone.

I hope Nissan sticks to it and comes back next year. Just so we get the true performance and some proper "data" on how such a car would do for future reference.

In retrospect they probably should have stayed home and worked on developing the design rather than doing preliminary testing at the world's most famous endurance race but perhaps the data gathered made the public embarrassment worthwhile. 

I wonder if there'd be a way to run an 'exhibition' class at Sebring, maybe even Daytona, to let these big all singing all dancing factory prototypes do some public mileage.

That idea works up until the point a non-points LMP1 wrecks with someone, possibly the race leader. Less concerning, but more likely, is the overall leader being humiliated every few laps by some 1000hp hybrid.

I will admit to being in the camp that suspects Ben Bowlby isnt quite the "Colin Chapman reborn" he hopes he is, so the lack of performance doesn't surprise me.

However a lot of the problems seem to be lack of design robustness for racing rather than just the FWD idea and as a petrolhead into the technical stuff I think Nissan's huge promotion of the car's special features  across all media is something they, and the team , should be thanked for.

In a  world where all the focus is on the driver, and the F1 teams have built a security wall of silence the KGB would be proud of, seeing real technical stuff being shown is great.

Edited by mariner, 16 June 2015 - 08:16.

In retrospect they probably should have stayed home and worked on developing the design rather than doing preliminary testing at the world's most famous endurance race but perhaps the data gathered made the public embarrassment worthwhile. 

I think Nissan have been rather disrespectful towards Le Mans.  They have used it for promotion purposes, despite knowing that their cars were not race ready and didn't have working hybrid systems   It would have been more honest to say so and withdraw.  

I know everyone uses it for promotion, but at least Audi, Porsche etc take their racing seriously as well.  Porsche pitched up with a brand new car last year after many years away from the top line; it didn't win but at least it put up a decent showing.  Nissan have just blocked three places on the grid that proper racing teams could have used - maybe only GTE cars, but serious efforts nevertheless.  And they are serial offenders - neither the Deltawing nor the Zeod were proper Le Mans cars, just promotional tools for Nissan.  ACO should say to Nissan 'enough - you have to pre-qualify if you want to enter next year'

The performance was pretty poor and they have to take that on the nose.  For me the worst looking part is Darren Cox protesting that they'd easily outpace the P2 field right up until the start.

They committed to a tight timeline at some point (as I understand it) less than a year ago; it seems like it really unraveled for them just in the test and qualifying weeks when they fully realized they could not even run ERS to the front wheels.  At that point you're left with a car with a strange layout designed specifically to exploit the rulebook around hybrid powertrains and aero/weight distribution — it's no surprise to me that the performance suffers more severely than on a conventionally laid out car that had to ditch ERS at the last minute.

So that failure is on them and it might go some way with the racing community to acknowledge that rather than talk around it.  They should just run an ad apologizing for only powering the winner in one prototype class

Should they have withdrawn after testing?  Qualifying?  Maybe, but it sounds like they were still chipping 3-4 sec/lap off their best times through those sessions, it's easy for me to see in that situation how they would want to keep going and see how far down the times go.  A few more sec and they would have started to make good on their promise vs the P2 cars.  So it's hard for me to hold them to a standard of magnanimity where they go home and leave their grid spots for yet another 458 or Vantage or 911.

For me it looks bad but it doesn't invalidate the concept any more than the AMR-One invalidated mid-engine RWD prototypes.  It just shows, like that car, that experienced people with deep pockets can get into bad situations, especially when they try to rush the engineering and testing phases.

I think Nissan have been rather disrespectful towards Le Mans.  They have used it for promotion purposes, despite knowing that their cars were not race ready and didn't have working hybrid systems   It would have been more honest to say so and withdraw.  

 

I know everyone uses it for promotion, but at least Audi, Porsche etc take their racing seriously as well.  Porsche pitched up with a brand new car last year after many years away from the top line; it didn't win but at least it put up a decent showing.  Nissan have just blocked three places on the grid that proper racing teams could have used - maybe only GTE cars, but serious efforts nevertheless.  And they are serial offenders - neither the Deltawing nor the Zeod were proper Le Mans cars, just promotional tools for Nissan.  ACO should say to Nissan 'enough - you have to pre-qualify if you want to enter next year'

You're jumping the shark with your criticism of this project. Equating it's success with respect is absurd, even laughable. I'm sure Le Mans were totally offended by the number of articles generated online by this project. If Nissan decide to withdraw before it is fully realised, perhaps your argument would hold water. Garbage like this really makes me pray they won't.

I'm sure Le Mans were totally offended by the number of articles generated online by this project. 

I wonder?   I am sure Toyota are delighted to get little or no positive press despite making a serious, professional and well-executed effort that was just not good enough to challenge the Germans.  But Nissan get loads of coverage for what was quite frankly a real amateur hour performance.  A LMP1-H with no hybrid power?  And all those excuses from Darren Cox that they only had 14 months to develop the car.  That's over a YEAR.  Pathetic.  And yes, hugely disrespectful towards one of the greatest of motor sport events.I hope ACO send their entry back to them next year.

Nope, it's just as silly to read the second time around.

Yeah that's some daytime soap level theatrics.

I can only assume that you are being a little short on understanding of the point.  But never mind. 

No hybrid power for Gods sake because it wasn't ready yet, no other reason. By rights they could have not raced at all, they already missed a load of rounds. THye are not making an indentikit GP2 car or WRC car yknow.

What would you rather? They put it in, endanger their drivers and circuit marshals?

Toyota made a car that worked last year but this year has been shown to be short in all areas, speed, power and overall pace. They are reliable but been found totally wanting and are being shown up.

You can say what you like about Nissan, but until YOU cna come up with a company in recent years that has designed something this revolutionary, you can't realy comment, irrespective of it working out the hat.

Tell me another manufacturer that has done something this different in recent years?  I can't think of many.

You seem quite happy to watch same colour, same shape tin boxes driving round everywhere, clap like a respectful little man and wait for next year, while watchign same shape boxes rodding round and clapping like a respectful Hindu cow.

Utter rot I say, I couldn't care less if it doesn't work. If anything, it has gotten peopel watching, and they might just enjoy it, I cetainly have a great deal more respect now for WEC than I did a few years ago, and Nissan are party responsible, nitially with the Deltawing, another staggering piece of kit that yes was not successful, but made you look, and now this car.

From Nissan's perspective, however, they still need to dig themselves out of the hole by realising the full potential of the concept. If not, it will be revered for the same reason as Mastercard Lola. It would be unforgivable if they pulled the plug prematurely on corporate rather than technical grounds. There is no sense in willing otherwise in a world already incapable of celebrating heterogeneity. You would think that the realm of engineering would at least be immune.

I have followed Ben Bowlbys career from his early clubman cars and for the love of me I cannot understand where he is coming from technically.

Did anyone on here really believe that this car was a good design? Technically I can see nothing but a total disaster despite the long explanation that has been given as to how it "works". Clearly it does not work so could anybody please explain how anyone expected it to win LeMans.

As I see it every part of the design is flawed.

Doesn't that depend on the design brief, which I certainly haven't seen and I rather doubt that you have?

Doesn't that depend on the design brief, which I certainly haven't seen and I rather doubt that you have?

Unless the design brief was to attract as much attention and publicity as possible and not to worry if it didn't work as a racing car?

Design brief?  I suspect it might be to try and win Le Mans although BRG might be right.

This is the reason I am posting here. To me the design makes absolutely no sense so what am I missing.

You don't know. I don't know, BRG doesn't know. Someone in nissan knows, and they aren't telling. So it all boils down to speculation. Did marketing pay for the project, if so as BRG suggests it may have met their objectives? Real car companies get reports of how many column inches, how many seconds of TV, their logo was visible. I used to know someone who ran a media monitoring company, he didn't do it for laughs.

I think the project was doomed competitively as soon as the RWD/KERS systems were set aside or abandoned.  Looks to me like the dynamic stability of the vehicle was based on the assumption of there being an AWD system to control it all properly, never mind the hundreds of missing hp to fully exploit the potential drag/aero advantage. Lacking those things, it's just a poor handling, underpowered car for the purpose. The concept remains untested in race conditions.   

Unless the design brief was to attract as much attention and publicity as possible and not to worry if it didn't work as a racing car?

Deliberately building something of which you know it's most likely a failure, yet create a heap of PR around it and rissk the fact that all of this PR is for naught and will backfire on you because the predictable failures does indeed happen?

I can't imagine any PR Agency or company would do anything like that: generating PR with and around something that is certain to be a failure. Now that will be an interesting strategy for the new Cube or the Quasquai.....

A PR stunt as you describe and suggest is very risky for any manufacturer.

To me it appears more as if Nissan has chewn more than it could swallow, given their budget, underestimated a few things they wanted to do and built on the car and ended up with quite some egg on their face. But being determined enough to accept the consequences of it all and race the thing they ended up with.

Elesewhere you have hinted on that Nissan should have withdrawn instead to make place for other cars. But hey, why did Aston Martin not withdraw that awful AMR-One when they knew that it had a reliability of second to none? Or why did the Hezemans gang still tried to race that Pagani Zonda in 2003 when it's reliability also was a joke.

If and that is indeed a big if, if they ever get the car running as anticipated and specified, then will be the time to make the final verdict on the entire concept. For the time being, they haven't convinced me yet and there is certainly some critisizm on what they did justified. But the project is still on borrowed time to prove its real potential to me. And I am fully aware of the fact it may wel be a big failure on just about every track but Le Mans. But since WEC is all about Le Mans....

Henri

desmo         

I think the project was doomed competitively as soon as the RWD/KERS systems were set aside or abandoned.  Looks to me like the dynamic stability of the vehicle was based on the assumption of there being an AWD system to control it all properly, never mind the hundreds of missing hp to fully exploit the potential drag/aero advantage. Lacking those things, it's just a poor handling, underpowered car for the purpose. The concept remains untested in race conditions.   

Totally agree. The project would have been abandoned if their simulations had predicted such poor performance. What we saw is totally due to lack of those systems.

Given the sophistication of simulation today, I have no doubt that the project would never have been funded if the original concept had been seen as unlikely capable of being competitive*.  And given that same sophistication, I think it unlikely the concept couldn't be developed into a competitive* package. Now, it may have never been in the cards to run this concept fast enough to scare a full factory Porsche team, but if they can get the idea around the Le Mans track in say the low 3:30s with the electric motors and the RWD working, that'd still be pretty damn impressive. That's only around six-seven seconds better than an almost completely undeveloped car that had neither of those this year did. The ducting to the diffuser looked a bit HVAC and showed none of the usual evidence of aero development. If the massflows through were near the anticipated values, there should potentially be a lot of riding a steep development curve possible. Probably almost anything can be made fast today if the aero works.

*competitive, granted, being a squishy subjective term.

Given the sophistication of simulation today, I have no doubt that the project would never have been funded if the original concept had been seen as unlikely capable of being competitive*. 

 

*competitive, granted, being a squishy subjective term.

I think we aren't factoring in the human element.  If it had been a solely computer designed and simulated concept, with decisions only taken if 'computer says yes' then would it have looked the way it did?  The human tendency is to persevere with something in the hope that it will come right.  Project managers don't want to lose face in their teams by admitting they have been mistaken.  How often do projects get binned because they are bad?  Very rarely because projects are effectively committee-run and we all know about committees!

My suspicion is that Mr Bowlby is a sort of automotive snake-oil salesman and sold Nissan on promises of a new and radical approach.  The Nissan PR machine got hooked on the idea of a radical car that they could make a splash with - hence the Superbowl launch.  The whole thing gained momentum within a corporate environment and ran away with all concerned.  They soon got too deep in to be able to change direction.  

Regardless, the project would not have proceded if the sims had predicted the track performance we saw. Conclusion - the poor track performance was not a result of the radical design. More likely due the lack of: RWD, a big bunch of power, de-bugging and track tuning time etc.

I wonder where Nissan are going with the whole 'Deltawing' concept? They have even commissioned a concept, all electric, 3 seater road car, loosely based on the concept to test out.

Given that over the last few years, none of the race cars built so far have shown themselves to be superior or show much sign of it, one wonders just exactly what mind set exists within the company or whether someone with enough power/ego is promoting it.

I think to be totlaly honest, issan and Bowbly have certainly managed to wing it a ltitle bit.

I would guess the sim data was marginal, and these days it is difficult to do a "Chapman" and design something uterly radical without doing stuff on sims that Colin really did not have access to. So it is harder to wing it!

Nissans approach to sports cars reminds me a little of Honda's approach to bike racing in teh 80's and 90's when they would do anything but follow the crowd.

They spent billions of yen trying to beat the established 2 strokes with a 4 stroke, then built a V3 2 stroke instead of a 4, then a single crank instead of a twin crank, then a V5 for their first 4 stroke. Their currnet MotoGP bike is very ordinary and Soichiro would be hating it no doubt!

If Nissan are using all this as R+D for their youth engineers fair play to them, it's a great idea. Because that is what Hodna used to do.

Regardless, the project would not have proceded if the sims had predicted the track performance we saw. Conclusion - the poor track performance was not a result of the radical design. More likely due the lack of: RWD, a big bunch of power, de-bugging and track tuning time etc.

One hopes not.

But the question remains, was the car ONLY off the pace because of the lack of a working ERS?  We have no evidence either way, only guesses.  Mine is that it would still not have been on the pace (ie within 4 or 5 secs a lap of a typical LMP1 time).  Until Nissan pitch up at a race with a fully working car, we won't know.

One hopes not.

 

But the question remains, was the car ONLY off the pace because of the lack of a working ERS?  We have no evidence either way, only guesses.  Mine is that it would still not have been on the pace (ie within 4 or 5 secs a lap of a typical LMP1 time).  Until Nissan pitch up at a race with a fully working car, we won't know.

With a working ERS, the brakes would work properly, power would go to the rear wheels as well under acceleration to fix the issue of going out of corners. Yes, it wouldn't fix the issue with the suspension instability when running over the kerbs, so just with a fully working ERS in this state it would be off the pace (but not that much), and with a functional FRICS (like what they're trying to test right now) that deficit would be cut down even further. Then... setup sweet spot? Tires? Aero adjustments?

The Japanese OEMs have always followed an unusual approach with their factory race car efforts. Recall Honda's first F1 engine that used air-cooling? Or how about Mazda's rotary engines built specifically for LeMans?

That's true. The Mazda won Le Mans & the Honda engine was a genuine effort. It just seems to me that the Nissan effort is a rather wishy-washy. The flaws have been well documented here. A serious effort would have addressed them earlier or not allowed them to occur in the first place. There are good, serious professional people involved but it does not have the air of a full blown assault on anything in particular. If Nissan are reluctant do make it a full scale Porsche/Audi/Toyota type effort, what are they hoping to achieve? They are not impressing people by just dabbling, whatever the perceived benefit is for them. In fact they are in danger of becoming or perhaps already have become, a laughing stock. We know the are better than that. Even if this car is brought up to a higher spec, it is doubtful they will be fully competitive.

An interesting exercise all the same.