Nissan Shows Improvement In V8 Supercars

 2013 ended up being a lost year in terms of ROI for Nissan Motorsports in Australia and their V8 Supercars effort.  The four cars they fielded in '13 were viewed as underpowered and not possessing a proper aero package.

The offseason saw a retooling of the engine as well as an entirely new aero design in hopes of getting the Nissan Altimas to the front of the V8 Supercars field.

The first event of the V8 Supercars season was this past weekend at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, Australia.  The V8 Supercars racing weekend is quite a bit different that say NASCAR here in the States.  There are actually three races on the weekend.  Two shorter races on Saturday and one long race on Sunday.

The changes Nissan made in the offseason seem to have paid off.  While not yet in the winners circle, Nissan certainly saw an improvement in their performance and produced some solid, consistent finishes.  Split between the Jack Daniels and Norton teams, Rick Kelly seems to be the #1 driver of the bunch finishing 6th, 11th and 5th in the three races and sits in 4th for the overall standings after the weekend.  Additional encouragement comes from the fact that the four cars saw only a single DNF on the weekend with that coming in the last race while Rick's Nissan teammates put together a number of other top 10 finishes as well.

Its not perfect, but its a lot better so far than 2013.

http://www.v8supercars.com.au/

Awesome Photo of Five Racing Navaras

There are a ton of cool racing (and other) events this weekend (and today) taking place around the world and none of them involve NAPCAR.

In South Africa for instance we have the opening round of the 2013 Donaldson Cross Country Championship (formerly the ABSA Offroad series).  At this even we have the largest Nissan based offroad team in the world.  The Regent Racing team will be fielding five top flight Nissan Navaras (Frontiers here in the US) with a sixth to show up at the series' next event.  The photo here is of their epic paddock area with the five Navaras all done up in similar livery parked squarely away.  At least two of these are V8 powered Navaras with the rest being standard V6s.

With this series producing some of the best Dakar racer's and vehicles in the world it is one to keep a close watch on.  Fielding a six team effort is a big deal , probly bigger in cost than the factory efforts of Ford or Toyota in that same series.  Here's hoping for a return to Dakar in '14 by Nissan in a big way, lead by this Regent racing team.

Regent Racing Homepage...

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...