The V8 Supercars Championship will self destruct within five years if the manufacturers don’t work together to achieve parity, believes Nissan’s global motorsport director Darren Cox.
The Japanese company’s return to Australian touring car racing this year has been largely hampered by a lack of straightline speed.
Initially blamed on engine performance, the issue is now being pinned on a high-drag aerodynamic package.
The Altima’s bodywork will undergo a re-appraisal when the Volvo S60 is homologated in the coming off-season.
As well as amping up its own efforts, including better utilising the expertise of its Japanese performance arm, Nimso, Nissan is calling on V8 Supercars to increase the accuracy of its current open-air aero testing procedures.
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“The methods are archaic,” Cox told Speedcafe.com of the aero testing.
“To do coast down tests to balance a car like that is not the way to do it.
“We need to get into the new millennium through CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), etc.”
“We’ve been given approval to change the aero pack, which is again a load of money that we shouldn’t be having to spend,” he added.
“Fingers crossed that they get it right this time.”
Nissan Motorsport owner Todd Kelly presented a wind tunnel testing proposal to V8 Supercars last year, which was knocked back largely on cost grounds.
This month’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 marked Cox’s second V8 Supercars event appearance after March’s season-opening Clipsal 500.
The Briton says that he left Mount Panorama with a greater understanding of “the myopic nature of Holden”.
The General Motors marque flexed its political muscle in August after a revised fuel was trialled in selected Nissan and Mercedes entries at Winton as the category chased fuel economy parity.
While the fuel was being assessed for use in the Pirtek Enduro Cup, Holden’s sponsorship manager, Simon McNamara, even called for Nissan to have its Winton win revoked on the grounds that it had gained an unintended power advantage.
Describing the presence of team representatives on the category’s rule-overseeing Commission panel as “crazy”, Cox says that attitudes must change within the paddock.
“We’ve put a huge amount of money in, we’ve put a huge amount of resource, we’ve got a good team with good drivers and good engineers, and yet the view of Holden is that ‘they need to do the hard yards’ and that they’d rather us not be there,” he said.
“It’s no problem for Holden, they can go and have a one-make series.
“The attitude of the championship, the organisers and the manufacturers, specifically Holden, need to look at the best practice in the DTM and Super GT in working together with manufacturers.
“At the moment it’s this historic ‘I’m red, you’re blue and never the twain shall meet, we can’t work together’. Well ok, the championship will die in five years then.
“Holden need to really wind it in and welcome the new manufacturers. Otherwise we’ll walk away again.”
The category confirmed at the weekend that a compulsory fuel intake of 185 litres will replace the compulsory pitstop method of assisting fuel economy parity for each race at this weekend’s Armor All Gold Coast 600.
