GT-R future for Nissan on track

Nissan’s decision to exit the Virgin Australia Supercar Championship (VASC) could have a silver lining – for the Australian GT Championship.

Nissan Australia boss, Stephen Lester, today announced the brand’s exit from the local premier series effective at the end of this season. Although the Kelly Racing organisation will likely run its existing Altima racers in the VASC in 2019, it will be without Nissan support.

That doesn’t mean Nissan Australia is set to turn its back completely on Australian motorsport, however.

Nissan boss Lester told motoring.com.au this morning that the company was still keen to have a motorsport presence Down Under.

“Supercars is a terrific local series but it is not the only series in the country,” Lester stated.

“Motorsport has always been a part of the history and DNA of the Nissan brand and we will entertain and look at other commercially viable [motorsport] opportunities.”

Although Nissan Australia already have two low-hour GT-R GT3 racers already in the country, Lester said the company had yet to formalise plans to enter the Australian GT Championship.

“We will make a decision on how we are going to utilise those vehicles very shortly,” he said.

“There’s nothing to announce just yet. Globally GT3 is partner-based and we would have to have a look at how that [an entry into local GT championship] would play out,” Lester told motoring.com.au.

“It takes two to tango. We are not actively looking for a partner. Next step is to leverage our network – there are probably people [we could work with],” he said.

Despite only modest on-track performance (two wins in six season), Lester said the Supercars partnership with Kelly Racing had been “tremendously successful”.

“We view the partnership internally as being successful. It’s tough to speculate how that [more wins] would have changed our decision [to exit Supercars],” he stated.

In the face of speculation to the contrary (some of it seeded with the Supercars paddock), Lester said at no time had Nissan participated in any program to evaluate the GT-R for Supercar use.

“It was never a point we were entertaining on the table from our side. I don’t see the alignment of GT-R with the Supercar,” he stated.

On the potential participation in local GT competition, Lester conceded the clock was ticking.

“We’ve got people within the organisation looking at the opportunities around that…

“Fortunately, we have those couple of [GT-R GT3 race] cars. It’s not the question of being that far off, it’s just a matter of having the right format and set up to be able to do it,” Lester stated.