NISSAN R90 The sister NME car lasted
until after midnight and was on the lead lap when it too suffered gearbox problems. NPTI’s lead car, running on Goodyears, put together an impressive run that looked likely to win the race for Nissan. Scriven: ‘They had set out a complete plan of how they were going to run the race, and I think it was coming to them when they had the fuel cell problem. For me, Le Mans 1990 will always be the one that got away.’ In the remaining WSPC races
Nissan’s Group C breakthrough result was a third place at Donington Park in 1989, where the R89C raced for the first time with carbon brakes and a six-speed version of the Hewland VGC gearbox
ANDY SCRIVEN – A 2011 PERSPECTIVE A
fter leaving Lola Cars at the end of the Nissan project,
Andy Scriven moved to the USA where he worked on the design and engineering of CART and NASCAR racecars for Penske Racing and later, working for Crawford, he returned to designing Sportscars. Looking back on the Lola Nissan project today, Scriven has mixed memories: ‘Eric Broadley always liked to have an input on every project, but I always thought he viewed Sportscars as his speciality,’ recalls Scriven. ‘As it was originally designed, the R89 had quite a low front roll centre and quite a high rear roll centre, which made the rear end feel rather nervous, especially on turn in. That was something I addressed quite early on. While doing that, I started to have discussions with Eric about geometry and what the tyres needed. At that time I was young and probably rather arrogant, so when Eric gave me what seemed to be waffly answers to my questions, like “Well, you need to design lots of options into these cars, give yourself lots of wishbone points so you can try lots of things”, my reaction was, “So you’re telling me that you don’t really know what’s needed?” I couldn’t understand,
www.racecar-engineering.com • Le Mans
at that time, how someone with Eric’s experience couldn’t have a better idea of what tyres really needed. Twenty years later, I now know exactly what Eric was talking about. I just wish he could have explained it to me better. ‘To me that was the saddest
part of the whole project. As a result of some of our conversations, I got off on the wrong foot with Eric and, of course, he didn’t have as much time to devote to the project as
thing and, as Eric rightly said, you do need to give yourself plenty of geometry options. But at that time I just didn’t believe it, and that set us on a collision course. To his credit, Eric didn’t demand I do things his way, he left me to it, and I’m grateful for the opportunity he gave me to learn. ‘Before I started at Lola, it had
already been decided that the car would have a full-width chassis, and that the intercoolers would be in the sidepods alongside the
“Had we talked more about the car, and had I listened more, I think we could have done a better job”
would have been good for it. Had we sat down and talked more about the car, and had I listened more, I think we could have done a better job and the car would have been better. But, in my youthful arrogance, Eric didn’t inspire me with much confidence. ‘Even today, tyres are still
something of a black art, and when you see F1 teams getting lost, with the resources they have available, what hope did we have back then? It’s not a simple
engine. I wasn’t a great fan of the full-width chassis because it committed you to too many things that you couldn’t change. I’d have preferred to design a car like the current LMPs, with a double width central cockpit and separate sidepods that could be changed to make them shorter, longer, taller, lower, waisted, or however you wanted them. But the R89 was a full-width chassis, like the TWR Jaguars, and, of course, in 1988 they were the
cars to beat. It was felt that a carbon fibre monocoque could save weight on body panels if it was full width, but I’m not convinced it was a good trade off. I think there was also a theory that a full-width monocoque gave you massive stiffness, which is all well and good, but a car is only as stiff as its weakest point. ‘The Nissan VRH35 engine was a nice piece but, looking back, I think we suffered from the fact that it was smaller in displacement than the Mercedes V8. That meant it had to be driven hard, and that ultimately hurt fuel mileage. That slowed us down in numerous races where we were fast enough to win but we couldn’t match the Mercedes on fuel economy. When the Mercedes drivers went into fuel save mode they could miss out gear shifts and use the wide torque band of their engine to haul the car out of the corner, while our drivers had to change down and burn extra fuel. ‘Had Group C continued with
turbos, we would have tried to get Nissan to build a bigger version of the engine. If we could have had a 4.0 or 4.5-litre engine, we could have saved some fuel mileage without giving up performance, and that would have made a real difference.’
of 1990, the NME cars achieved a 100 per cent finishing record, with second places in Montreal, Canada and Mexico City. At home in Japan, NISMO won the national Group C series with its updated cars but, after Le Mans 1990, it became clear that Lola would not
be involved in the forthcoming Nissan 3.5-litre Group C project. Furthermore, the manufacturer decided to withdraw from the 1991 WSPC and await the new car – to be built in the USA by NPTI – rather than race on with turbo cars carrying a 100kg weight penalty. Of course, this meant Nissan would not be eligible to race at Le Mans in ’91. Nevertheless, chassis and
engine development continued on the turbo cars. In Japan, NISMO successfully defended its national championship in 1991, while NPTI raced its R90CKs in the Daytona 24 Hours in ’91 and ’92, and it was at the ’92 race that a NISMO RC91, based on the original R89C, finally won a 24-hour race for Nissan, although it wasn’t the one it really wanted…
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