Nissan Motorsport (Nismo) announced this weekend that it intends to compete in the LMP1 category of the World Endurance Championship in 2015, going against the likes of Audi, Porsche and Toyota.
The Japanese manufacturer is slowly expanding its motorsports programme with the award-winning GT Academy programme, efforts in the Australian V8 Supercars series the Zeod RC project. The return to the top tier of endurance racing marks the first time since 1999 that Nissan has embarked on such an exercise. Nissan also completes in the Japanese Super GT, where the Calsonic Impul team currently leads the championship through the efforts of Hironobu Yasuda and João Paulo Lima De Oliveira in the number 12 GT-R.
“Innovation is at the heart of everything we do. There is no better place to demonstrate innovation than here in Europe’s new hot-bed of digital marketing and, from next year, on track at Le Mans,” says Nissan chief planning officer and executive vice-president Andy Palmer.
There are no specific details about the new Nissan racecar yet, which has been dubbed GT-R LM Nismo, but according to Palmer the Nismo team “won’t be turning up in a vehicle which is a basically another hybrid that looks like another Porsche, Audi or Toyota”.
