NEWS – THE NISSAN LEAF GETS RACY
April 22, 2011 by Pierre Laurent Ribault
Filed under Circuit Racing, Latest Articles, Nissan
Nissan is toying with the idea of a sportier version of its mass produced electric car for a while now. First it was at the Tokyo Auto Salon with an aerokit, but 4 months later they decided to power up and enrolled Nismo to see what can be done. The result is the Nissan Leaf RC Nismo, a full fledged race car.
As it was shown this week at the New York Auto Show, you could assume that it was just a pretty dress-up exercise for the benefit of the show visitors, as are plenty of these types of concept cars. You would be wrong. And to prove it, Nismo took the black development prototype to Tsukuba yesterday and let Tsugio Matsuda, Nissan Super GT works driver, loose with it, marking the first time it was driven on a racing circuit. Everything went ok, although Nismo did not publish any lap times.
The car just shares a passing resemblance with the Leaf. It is a carbon monocoque, carbon bodied purpose built silhouette that would not be out of place on the Super GT grid. The only parts it carries from the road car are the motor and batteries, installed in rear mid-engined configuration and powering the rear wheels as they should.
With 107 hp like the Leaf, it will not set the charts on fire but the car weight is kept low at 938 kg. That is good for less than 7 seconds to 62 mph and a Vmax of 150 kph.
At race pace, the car will last only 20 minutes until it runs out of juice. That is not good for endurance racing, but imagine a grid of these for a 10 or 15 laps sprint stint. Maybe Nismo is onto something here…
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Words – Pierre-Laurent Ribault
Source and photos – Nismo and Nissan. More pics of the test at Tsugio Matsuda’s blog
