V8SC: carsales liviered Altima into action
carsales Nissan V8 Supercar hits the trackcarsales Racing set its first laps at Winton Motor Raceway, near Benalla (Vic) yesterday. On track as part of a scheduled Nissan Motorsport test session, the newly-liviered Nissan V8 Supercar’s performance was one of the highlights of the day, held under bright blue winter skies.
The V8 Supercar category severely limits testing opportunities in terms
of both allowable days and tyre allocation, thus the day was a long, but
important one for Todd Kelly and his UK-based Nissan Global Athlete
co-driver, Alex Buncombe.
With Todd keen to trial a number of set-up combinations ahead of the Sandown race debut of the refreshed #7 Nissan Motorsport Altima, Alex’s task for the day was to maximise seat time. Buncombe’s normal role is as a Nissan GT-R GT3 driver in the European-based Blancpain series.
“We’ve worked on a couple of interesting set-up directions,” Todd Kelly told motoring.com.au fresh from the seat of the carsales Altima at Winton.
Nissan Motorsport’s Todd Kelly is now a fully-fledged carsales team member… And he’s excited
“There’s some settings that have worked well on new tyres and now we need to make the car work as well on older rubber. I think we’ve made some good progress today,” he stated.
Buncombe’s task was more focussed. The last time the UK-based racer drove a V8 supercar was late in 2014 at the Gold Coast 600, so it was a chance to get back into the V8 groove.
With significant aero and driver aids including antilock brakes and racing traction control, Buncombe’s GT3 Nismo GT-R is very much a ‘digital’ racer. Australia’s V8 Supercars are resolutely ‘analogue’!
“You couldn’t get two more different cars to drive,” Buncombe told motoring.com.au.
“Obviously I’ve got to get the V8 Supercar chip back into my brain. It’s very different to what I’ve been used to back in Europe.
“You’ve got to have a lot of finesse with the V8, you cannot overdrive it. As a race driver you just want to go flat out all of the time, but with this car, you’ve really got to think about it,” Alex enthused.
carsales Racing’s favourite Pom is getting match-fit ahead of the Sandown 500
Nissan Motorsport racing manager Scott Sinclair told motoring he was pleased with the squad’s progress at Winton.
“We’re at an exciting phase of our development. We’re coming on and we expect to improve our results
“Endurance season is all about the team… We’re working hard behind the scenes to make sure we come to the track fully prepared. We saw at Bathurst last year it can throw pretty much anything at you but we’re quietly confident,” Sinclair stated.
Nissan Motorsport will officially launch the new-look carsales Racing #7 Altima at Melbourne’s Federation Square this Saturday (September 5). Todd Kelly will be on hand for autograph and fan sessions and the team will have some extra surprises in store…
Keep an eye on carsales and motoring.com.au pages for more information on the launch and how you can win a guest ride in the Altima racecar.
Starts are all important in V8 Supecars… And there’s only one way to get good at them…
carsales Racing Nissan Motorsports team manager Scott Sinclair delivers a testing rundown
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