We’re now well into the endurance racing season and one of the most challenging is upon us again with the 2015 Nürburgring 24 hours.
Things haven’t gone entirely to plan for either the GT Academy team or the race itself this year, with an incident at a warm-up race earlier in the season leading to a rejig of the driver line-ups and a change in the rulebook to slow the cars down to prevent a repeat. Nevertheless, there’s still two Nissan GT-Rs waving the GT Academy flag for us this weekend.
Leading a charge for overall honours is the all-black #35 GT-R, driven by former GT1 world champion Michael Krumm, Super GT driver Kazuki Hoshino, GT Academy lynchpin Alex Buncombe and the original GT Academy winner Lucas Ordonez. However, this car has not qualified inside the top 30 after having both qualifying laps deleted for exceeding the new track speed limits, so it’s going to be something of a battle for them early on in the race.
The second GT-R is the now-traditional Schulze Motorsport car, also running in the top SP9 class. Tobias and Michael Schulze will again be driving this #21 GT-R, this year joined by 2010 GT Academy winner Jordan Tresson and the 2012 German GT Academy winner Florian Strauss.
Race Coverage
- Starting Time: 1400 UTC/GMT (local time conversions here)
- GTPlanet’s Live 24h Nurburgring Community Discussion
- Official Live Timing and video stream from 24h-rennen.de
- The 24hstundenonline.de GPS car tracker
- Radio Le Mans
- NISMO Global @NISMO
- Lucas Ordoñez @Lucas_Ordonez
- Michael Krumm @MichaelKrumm
- Alex Buncombe @al_buncombe
- Florian Strauss @FStraussGTA
Other Resources
- sportscar-info.de’s PDF car and driver list.
Though all the focus may be on Germany this week, other NISMO athletes are busy elsewhere, with Gaetan Paletou and Sir Chris Hoy taking on the ELMS round at Imola in their LMP3 Ginetta-Nissans. That will be a 4 hour race tomorrow, ending 2 hours after the N24 – so there’s plenty of time to catch up if you still have the energy!
Images courtesy of Red Square Images.
See more articles on European Le Mans Series, Florian Strauss, Gaetan Paletou, Jordan Tresson, and Lucas Ordonez.
Over. Audi, BMW, Porsche. RJN GT-R 9th place. Great race at the Nurburgring!
9th place for the Nissan Guys overall , well done
The Nissan GT Academy Team RJN is current at 12th place but still 7 hours to go
I think I just heard Darren Cox confirm that the GTR LMP1 will be coming to GT6, hopefully this is true as that means we may have it for the 4th round of the GT Academy. If anyone wants to know the time point he says something about it then it is just under 4 hours from the start of the stream.
Was it definitely for GT? I wasn’t really listening and I just heard him say people will be driving it “in the virtual world” very shortly. GT6 is the obvious candidate but it could well come to PCARS instead/as well, as they’re releasing free monthly DLC, and have a good relationship with the ACO I believe.
Is it just me or is the height of the GT-R lower than it once was?
So Kaz is NOT driving this year, I see. Well, i hope all goes well!
Kazunori was listed in one car (#50 Aston Martin), however it seems that there was a late driver change.
Speed limit? How do the drivers manage that?
“The Flugplatz, Schwedenkreuz, and Antiniusbuche sections of the track will now be limited to 200 kph (124 mph), and Döttinger Höhe will be limited to 250 kph (155 mph). Speed will be verified by GPS and stiff penalties will be in place for violating the limit in these sections.”
There is more than one way to verify speed. They know the gearing and the speed at what RPM, so they keep there engine below THAT rpm during THAT section of track, and they are fine. You don’t need a speedometer (though I’m sure they have one. ;) ).
Most of them have a limiter, like pit limiter for those zones. They just press a button and the speed will not go over 200/250. If you do this once, you already recieve a 92 sec penalty. And yes, they control it via GPS
Speed limits in qualifying?? Oh good Lord…