Nissan Le Mans car: the driver's view

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Nissan has stepped into the lion's den. No, scratch that. They've jumped into the den and poked the bloody things too. They've squared up to them face on, and basically said, ‘you, outside, now'.

It's the only explanation we can think of to describe a company that is fielding a radical, 1250bhp front-wheel-drive prototype at this year's Le Mans 24hrs in the top LMP1 category; a category contested by Porsche (16 outright wins), Audi (13 outright wins with consecutive victories between 2004-2008, and 2010-2014), and Toyota (overall winners of the 2014 WEC Championship).

Not just that, but with an unfortunate crash test fail in March - a crucial hurdle they had to vault in such a short time frame - the company's plans of getting race experience at the first two rounds of the WEC at Silverstone and Spa were shelved.

This means the very first time this radically designed prototype will see racing action is at... Le Mans. Where they must face those racing giants head on. Flat out. For 24 hours.

"It takes a lot of balls to do something so radically different," explains the brains behind the LMP1 GT-R LM racer, Ben Bowlby. "We think the front-wheel-drive, front-engined setup gives us a very big operating envelope. That's the basis of our approach taking on Audi, Porsche and Toyota."

And one of those people taking on the La Sarthe triumvirate is British racing ace and good friend of TG, Jann Mardenborough. Yep, the Nissan GT Academy protégé and poster boy for a million gamers across the planet, will be one of nine drivers piloting three GT-R LM Nismos at Le Mans this year.

Now that he's had some proper seat time, having tested at the Circuit of the Americas and Bowling Green, TG caught up with him to see how it feels to actually drive the thing...

"The power? It's a little bit like being a passenger," Jann explains. "The sensation you have when you're a passenger and somebody accelerates abruptly and quickly, and there's that split second where your eyes have to catch up with what you're doing... when you first jump in the car and accelerate for the first time, you don't expect that much shove.

"It takes a bit of getting used to, and of course the following laps your body adjusts and it's all fine. But definitely the first time you jump in it, on the outlap, and give it some power, it's... a different experience. It's got a lot of punch.

"It's definitely the most ferociously accelerating car I've ever driven."

"The tyres are a lot better," says Jann. "Michelin have done a good job in developing the tyres, not just for the front but for the rear. And we've learned things in wet conditions too. When we ran a conventional wet tyre with a wet tread pattern for example, the car was horrible to drive, it was very oversteery.

"The Michelin engineer then put - essentially - a slick tyre on the rear with just two tramlines of tread cut into the tyre. All the drivers looked at him quite oddly saying ‘you're going to run slicks while it's raining and properly wet'? He seemed pretty confident in what he was doing, and we jumped in the car and surprisingly it was so much better.

"The contact patch at the rear of the car was greatly improved, and we got more grip. We've had a lot of wet running which was great to get final setups for the car. We learned something valuable just for the tyres which should help us at Le Mans."

Why is this important? The weather at Le Mans is unpredictable, at best...

"You can definitely hear the different power units working," Jann says. "The flywheel hybrid system spins at 52,000 rpm so you can hear it whining, so there's a lot of noise going on which is very... different to what we've heard in the past.

"Of course the engineers assured me that everything is normal! There's a whole brake-by-wire system that's very difficult to map on the car. You use the ‘flybrid' to slow down the car, but at some point you have to transfer it to the mechanical brakes, so tuning that software-wise is very time consuming and it takes a lot of effort.

"When you do it right, there should be no difference between ‘flybrid' braking and mechanical braking. You shouldn't feel that overlap. We've got that at the moment, so it's tuning everything so that we don't feel these notches. At the last test I didn't even notice."

"On power, we have understeer," says Jann. "We don't have any issues with oversteer unless we overcook the brakes going into a corner and lock a wheel, that's the only time we get oversteer really.

"But in a slow-speed corner, say a corner like Luffield at Silverstone - a long-radius corner - and you're applying power with steering lock on, our car will understeer, because of course the fronts are doing two things, accelerating and cornering, so we do have understeer mid to exit in slow-speed corners.

"On high-speed corners it feels very neutral like a racing car should, and we have lots of downforce so the tyres aren't scrubbing. It's up to us, and the engineers, to try and get around that understeer with different diff-exit settings. So definitely, we have to get the car as straight as possible on exit, while applying the power. It's the same rule if you're in a rear-wheel-drive car struggling for traction, though. We can go in and the entry is pretty good, on the exit we have to be a bit straighter. So yes, there's understeer."

"The car is very communicative, and we get a lot of information through the steering wheel - we have hydraulic steering - so there's a lot of information that comes through. Personally I haven't driven it completely flat out on the ragged edge, because our testing plan is on course for Le Mans, so we can't afford to go off at all.

"We have to be quite disciplined in that respect, which is tough, because it's testing and we're supposed to drive very quickly and then sometimes in turn that means a mistake. But overall it behaves like a normal racing car, lots of information through the steering wheel and through the seat of your pants.

"Sometimes when you have oversteer on the entry into a corner you've lost the rears, and that's... interesting, because you have to then apply a little bit of throttle, to get around that. If you had oversteer going into a corner in a RWD car you wouldn't really do anything, you stay off everything and countersteer and hope it grips. With us we have to apply a little bit of throttle.

"It's a bit easier, but it's telling your head you can actually apply some throttle. Things like that, it's a bit quirky, and you have to think about it - it's not natural at the moment, but with more laps and time in the car, it'll be normal."

"I think we did 2,200km at Bowling Green, and the only thing that stopped us running into the evening on the last day - we did a lot of pitlane work and changes and stopping and starting, much more than we'd do at Le Mans - was the clutch.

"We were doing so many pullaways trying different things, it was raining and soaking wet, the clutch just gave way. That was the only issue we had over four days.

"The engine is strong - no issues at all throughout testing. We can push now on the brakes, they last a long time, and the speeds are going to be very high. We did 330km/h along a 1.2km straight at Bowling Green, I think at Le Mans it's 1.6 or 1.8km. So we're going to be rapid at Le Mans."

"I'm anxious to get going," he says, with palpable excitement. "We do a lot of testing, but it's nothing compared to racing... in any category. Testing is all well and good, going around by yourself, but in the race it's just different. There are so many more variables involved. It's just so much more exciting, I'm just anxious to be on track with our competitors so we can really understand where our strengths are.

"Le Mans is going to be our best shot. The car has been built specifically for it: hopefully we'll have good straight line speed compared to the others, and hopefully we can be a few km/h quicker. It'll help on the stopwatch.

"We have to finish as well, so our reliability has to be spot on. It's a sprint race now, so we have to race for 24 hours flat out and take it to them. Everybody is optimistic at Nissan, but it's our first year, so we're going in perhaps not as strong as the others but we're working hard to make sure we're on their level.

He's not worried about any of the Big Three, however. And actually, thinks they should be worried about him...

"All three are strong competitors, they're strong in different areas of the sport. And everyone at the start of Le Mans seems to write off Audi, but they always seem to be the ones laughing at the end of it. We treat everyone the same and expect the unexpected.

"We see them all as a threat... but hopefully they'll see us as a threat too."

Game, and indeed, on. Roll on June, and hopefully, a Battle Royale for the ages...

To get a better insight on Nissan's radical Le Mans challenger, click here for Ben Bowlby's breakdown.