CRG-I Do Borrow Nissan Altima and Sarah Cattaneo Finish 5th in Season Debut

A real solid result against some top competition at the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge at Daytona yesterday.  The car itself has a long history in sportscar racing and is originally the Skullcandy Altima that raced all over the country for the past few years.

The CRG-I Do Borrow effort switched from a Honda Civic last year to this Altima and have been doing quite well.  Ahead of Cattaneo's 5th place finish were three Porsche Caymans and the winning JCW Mini.  In fact, the Altima turned the fastest lap of the race at 103.6 mph but didn't have the consistency to put it on the podium this time.  Looking forward to more solid finishes out of this effort in '17 at the rest of the IMSA schedule.

If anyone can provide a link to this team's webpage or even Facebook page it would be appreciated as I can't find anything but the individual driver's personal pages...

BMW Endurance Challenge at Daytona '17 results...

Nissan Returning to Super Bowl Advertising Showing Titan and Murano

For almost 20 years Nissan has been absent from advertising during the Super Bowl.  It has now announced plans to return with one produced by advertising powerhouse TBWA/Chiat/Day for the '15 edition of the Super Bowl in early February next year.

Why now?  Well, because Nissan has its three flagship vehicles with redesigns/introductions coming to production in the '15 model year.  For crossovers you have the new Murano which has seen a very recent introduction as a '15 model, for sedans you have the '16 Maxima which is to be introduced in the first half of '15 and of course and perhaps the focus of this ad you have the production of the '16 Nissan Titan diesel for trucks at the January NY Auto Show.  Though none of these will be Nissan's sales leaders (the Rogue, the Altima and the Frontier will likely still lead their category sales in '15) these are the top offerings in each segment and represent the models Nissan hopes its customers aspire to when buying the less expensive models.

Nissan Returns to Super Bowl Advertising...

Four Nissans in Today's IMSA CTSCC at Daytona...

Good to see Nissan fielding a solid number of cars at this year's opening event at Daytona.  With the race occurring early this afternoon the 2014 Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season gets underway.

There appear to be two, two car teams for this year.  In the top end GS class we have the Doran Racing/Tim Bell Racing 370Z effort while in the ST (street tuner) class we have the Skullcandy Nissan Altima team which has added a second car for the '14 season.

Qualifying for today's event took place on Thursday and saw some solid results for the Nissans.

In GS the Tim Bell driven #28 370Z qualified 11th of 26 while Brad Jaeger put the #14 Z in the 15th position.  Given they only had two or three laps of qualifying, I'm not sure how much this says.  Additionally, every other car in the GS class is a V8 (except for a lone Subaru STi) the Zs will have their work cut out for them keeping up on the oval stretches of the Daytona circuit which is likely the track that least suits them of any on the schedule.

Down in the ST class, the Skullcandy team put its #33 Altima into the 4th position (of 35) off the line behind the hands of Bryan Heitkotter, the 2011 Nissan Playstation Academy winner and by now well diversified driver.  The #34 Altima of Johnny Canavas didn't fare quite so well but qualified 25th.  The race will be broadcast on Fox Sports 2 at 6PM Eastern today...so if you get that channel...tune in and look for some fast (hopefully!) Nissans.

Doran Racing to Field Two 370Zs in 2014 CTSCC

After running a single car effort the past couple years in the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, Doran Racing is moving to a two car effort this year.

Performing well at the Daytona Speedway "Roar Before the 24" testing session recently the two GS class 370Zs finished well inside the top half of the field and were the fastest cars present on the "road course" section of Daytona which should be similar to the tracks they will be running all year long vs. the oval portion where the larger engined vehicles excelled.

The 2014 racing season is about to begin with the first race in the series coming up just before the 24 Hours of Daytona and Nissan should be present in numerous locations, I'll try and follow along!

Doran Racing website...
Doran Racing announces two car effort...

Skullcandy Nissan Returning in '14 to the IMSA Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge

The black clad Skullcandy Nissan Altima's will be returning to the race circuit in 2014 after a solid effort in '13.  Its two car team finished 11th and 20th overall for the year out of 39 teams with one race win and a number of top ten finishes within the ST class.  It also looks like they have added a 370Z to their racing stable and will compete in the next rung up, GS class, in the IMSA CTSCC, having shown a fully race ready Z at SEMA '13 a couple months back.

The factory based series often runs on the same weekend as the high end TUDOR United SportsCar Championship (formerly the Rolex series).  The 2014 season will be 12 races long, up from 10 in '13 with the first event coming on 1/24/14 at Daytona prior to the 24 Hours of Daytona TUDOR event.

Skullcandy Nissan 2014 Plans...

Final Group of Nissans at SEMA 2013

Well, this is it...

A fairly weak showing for Nissans and Datsuns at SEMA 2013.  While Nissan has introduced a number of new models in the last 24 months none of them have really captured the interest of the aftermarket.  The Altima, Sentra, Rogue, Versa, etc. aren't exactly high on the enthusiasts wish lists.

Hopefully that will change in the next 12 months or so with a new Titan, a next generation 200SX model, a hybrid GT-R, a new Z and others.  Though I am surprised there weren't some modified Nissan Juke's there as its small displacement turbo and radical styling seem targeted at the culture SEMA represents.  At least there was one Titan and a short course Nissan present.  We'll take what we can get.

Nissan Takes Out Kangaroo at Bathurst 1000

The poor kangaroo is about the only thing Nissan vehicles took out this weekend at the classic V8 Supercars event held in Australia.  The return of Nissan to the series has not been nearly as successful as original hopes had been with both two car teams struggling to break into the top ten, let alone podium or winning positions.

So as the season winds down and the V8 Supercars attacked their most famous track for 1000 kilometers and 161 laps, its only fitting that their season will be best known for an incident that occured early in the race and had no impact on the eventual outcome.

Twenty laps into the event the #7 Altima of David Russell hit a track hopping kangaroo.  The impact occured at 160 kph.  The driver had zero chance of avoiding the hit according to reports and no video has been released of the impact.  The kangaroo reportedly survived the impact and hopped away.  An image of the results can be seen here as well as video of a kangaroo on the track during the race...just no video of the accident itself.

This is not the first time this has happened at the Bathurst 1000 as back in 2004 a near identical incident took place in nearly the same spot.  Drivers were told before the event that fences surrounding the track had been raised and culling efforts in the local area had taken place to help prevent such impacts.  Guess that needs a bit more work...

Nissan V8 Supercars Liveries Revealed

With the most anticipated Australian V8 Supercars season in many years beginning in only a couple of weeks it was time for Nissan to finally take the wraps off their four car effort before this weekend's testing sessions.

One team (that run by Todd and Rick Kelly) will carry the black and white Jack Daniel's scheme while the other team with drivers James Moffat and Michael Caruso will see a black and yellow "Norton" scheme.  These are certainly the best looking and most aggressive Nissan Altima's I've ever seen.

How the team performs is yet to be seen however and given that the team admits to being down on horsepower as compared to its adversaries and using an engine based on the now aged VK56 platform, I have my concerns.

We may know more after this weekend and getting a look at the lap times.  With the V8 Supercars series running an event here in the States at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas later this year, it would be nice if they were competitive right out of the box.  We'll see.

V8 Altima Liveries Unveiled...

Good Start For Nissan Motorsports in 2013

There are no Nissans that I know of running in the 24 Hours of Daytona which is a shame given how well Nissans have done in recent endurance events around the world but there were three Nissans running in the Continental Tire BMW Performance 200.

The Continental Tire series as part of the Grand Am organization focuses on more of your typical street cars versus the prototypes and higher end machinery seen in top level Grand Am races.  Mustangs, Civics, Porsches, Camaros, Aston Martins, BMWs, etc.  Within the Continental Tire series there are two classes, the GS and the ST.  The ST being the tad slower more "stock" race vehicles.

The ST class this year sees two Nissans from the Skullcandy Nissan team out of Utah.  Using 3.5 liter Altima coupes the two black cars performed better that could have ever been hoped yesterday.  The Skullcandy #33 Altima won the event taking the ST class win, besting its prior best result in the series of 8th in '12.  The win by the #33 was backed up by a ninth place finish by the #34 Skullcandy Altima in the ST class.  The winning #33 finished 25th overall in the event out of 69 entries.

On a secondary note there was also a Nissan in the GS class as well.  The #14 370Z of Doran racing finished 15th in class and overall.  This Z team also ran in '12 and has always been fast but subject to bad luck and a few gremlins.  A 15th place finish out of the gate in '13 however is a solid result.

While having a Nissan perform in the 24 Hours of Daytona would be a great thing to see, a win and a ninth in the ST class and a 15th in the GS class is not a bad way to start.