IMSA: Development accelerating for Nissan DPi

A flurry of work in Japan and France should have Nissan's new Onroak-built Ligier Daytona Prototype international ready to turn its first laps in just over a month. Although Nissan was the first manufacturer to confirm a new IMSA DPi program when it announced an alliance with Tequila Patron ESM in September, the brand was the last of three DPi projects to launch which has created a time deficit to overcome on the production side.

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"Overall things are going really well," NISMO boss Michael Carcamo told RACER. "I just had a conference call with the guys [at Onroak] in France and last week I was in Japan checking on powertrain development and that's going really well. The engine is on the dyno and everyone was happy and readying to ship it out to Europe for installation.

"On the chassis side, things are on schedule for the [IMSA DPi aerodynamic mapping] Windshear test and then we're on schedule to have our first shakedown at the end of December. We'll do our own tests first; others will have a lot more time testing their own cars so we'll test privately before anything else."

From ensuring the road car-derived motor will withstanding the twisting and flexing under braking and high-speed cornering to lowering the engine by switching to a dry-sump oiling system, NISMO and Onroak have a lot of work to complete and then verify once testing begins.

"There's two difficult parts: The first is you go from a front-mount GT3 car to the rear of a prototype, so you change everything structurally on how the engine connects to the car," Carcamo said. "It's complicated from a structural standpoint, but not so much technically. You create front faceplates and rear mounts for the engine to sit in the back of a prototype. Then it's making sure you know the load paths and making sure fundamentals of the engine as it was originally designed are met.

"The engine we use in the GT car is wet [sump], and what we'll use in the prototype is dry, so that's different. At this point we haven't made any significant changes with the forced induction because we're meeting the [power and torque] targets that were outlined. The engine itself is a strong package, and we can change if necessary but it already has large turbos and they're reliable. But we can make more power if that becomes a need."

Carcamo also confirmed Nissan and Onroak have taken another swing at incorporating more brand identity in its custom DPi bodywork.

"In order for us to move quickly on this with a later start than the others, we worked with Onroak much more on the cooling and packaging side, so IMSA came back and asked us to do more work, and while I don't have anything confirmed, I expect we're close to getting approval from IMSA," he said.

Where Cadillac and Mazda are expected to announce multi-year DPi projects in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, Nissan appears to have a wait-and-see approach regarding long-term commitments to the class based on the marketing returns IMSA can offer.

"Our position at this point is to try and enter," Carcamo said. "The first step was to try and enter a great series with great events and a great team. That was the genesis of getting the program going. What happens in the future depends on the results and how the series itself grows. We're not ready to make any commitments about the long-term future, but we hope there's a lot of opportunities are there and the growth is reflected in the media and the value."