PWC: Brand-new Nissan GT-Rs under construction

The Always Evolving team will have two brand-new Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3s to use next year in pursuit of the Pirelli World Challenge GT championship. Led by the veterans at AIM Autosport, the pair of factory twin-turbo V6 GT-R entries piloted by James Davison and Bryan Heitkotter in 2016 will be parked in favor of newly comissioned cars from Nissan Motorsports.

"The plan is they'll be replaced with new cars," Nissan North America Motorsports Manager Rick Kulach told RACER. "It's not really a model year designation change, but two GT-Rs are being built right now with all the latest updates. They're built by NISMO in Japan and assembled by JRM in England."

Heitkotter (above) swept both PWC GT rounds at the Utah Motorsports Campus in his No. 05 Nissan and led the team in the standings with fifth overall while Davison (below), who missed two rounds, captured two podiums on the way to seventh in GT. The confirmation of Always Evolving's next driver lineup, which could include a continuation with Heitkotter and Davison or see the Nissan program move in a different direction, is the next item of business for Kulach to resolve.

As he explains, PWC's increasing move into short endurance races with its SprintX category is the primary reason for the brand's undecided driver roster.

"That hasn't been determined yet because that will depend on the final version of what SprintX is going to be," Kulach said. "That's probably going to be released at PRI (Dec. 8-10) because they were looking at making the 60-minute races longer, so depending on what they do there, it could change if we're looking for pro-am drivers to be part of the team for SprintX in addition to the drivers going for the season-long GT championship. It's complicated, so once we have a handle on how many drivers are needed and what kind of drivers, then we can finish the process."

The PWC season opens March 10-12 in support of IndyCar at St. Petersburg in Florida.