BRAESIDE, Victoria, Australia — Team Preview by Race Chaser Online V8 Supercars Correspondent James Pike — Robert Cianflone/Getty Images AsiaPac photo —
Welcome back to Race Chaser Online’s Preview of the 2015 V8 Supercars Championship! We continue our run through the field with the second pairing in the Nissan Motorsport squad — last year they were the Norton Hornets, this year they’re Team NISMO.
Nissan Motorsport / Team NISMO
DRIVERS:
No. 10 – Michael Caruso, Team NISMO Nissan Altima
No. 99 – James Moffat, Team NISMO Nissan Altima
2014 TEAM POINTS FINISH: 5th
2014 HIGHLIGHT MOMENT: The third-place finish for James Moffat and Taz Douglas in the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000
Of all the teams in the V8 Supercars Championship, the Team NISMO Nissans (then Norton Hornets) might have been the most quietly consistent team throughout the grid in 2014.
Not to say that they didn’t have their moments in the sun, though. James Moffat may have very well done the best job of summarizing the zaniness of last year’s Supercheap 1000 when he exclaimed on the podium that his team “had stuffed their car in the wall twice and still finished second!”
Even though it is Todd Kelly that is team principal and owner, it was this half of the Nissan Motorsport team that finished higher in the points in 2014. That flip-flop in the standings can be accounted for almost entirely off of improved consistency for the Team NISMO cars. In 2013, this half of the operation combined for 12 DNFs; last year, that number was halved.
In fact, it was that lack of DNFs that landed Team NISMO fifth in the team championship standings — that number, incidentally, was the fifth lowest of the two-car entries in the championship. It also bested the number of DNFs posted by the Jack Daniel’s Racing Nissans — by one!
Yet while the Team NISMO cars were good at finishing races, they were not so great at finishing high up in the running order (hence the ‘quiet’ consistency). Between Moffat and Michael Caruso, there were only two podiums in 2014. While both podiums came within the PIRTEK Enduro Cup races, that number will be a disappointment to the team if it is only matched this season. Team NISMO will want to find the trophies and champagne more.
Looking forward to 2015, this team’s biggest change is the paint job on their cars. Software giant Norton left the team at the end of the 2014 season, and left these two cars without a sponsor. While that would be an issue to most, it isn’t so much of a problem when factory support from Nissan is present; the world’s sixth-largest automotive company decided to stump up the money to sponsor these cars, so it will be the NISMO branding that they carry into 2014.
Furthermore, both Caruso and Moffat have changed their numbers for 2014 — Michael moves to the No. 10, and James to the No. 99 in a nod to his father Allan (who is a legend of the old Australian Touring Car Championship and ran the No. 9 throughout his career).
As far as changes in performance go, the story should be nearly identical to that of the Jack Daniel’s Racing Nissans. All of the aerodynamic testing and changes that the Nissans underwent in the offseason will be applied to all four cars, so the Team NISMO machines will also run with the new end-mounted rear wings that the Jack Daniel’s Racing cars are running with. This should mean that the Nissans should finally have their rear-end drag issues sorted for 2015, and all four cars should be faster down the straightaways.
Though the Team NISMO cars were not as fast as the Jack Daniel’s Racing cars at the SuperTest, one would think that the performance gains should not take long to make it to the Team NISMO cars as well.
In the end, it may very well be a figurative coin toss to see which of the two Nissan teams fares better in 2015. Given that all four cars are based out of the same race shop, their on-track performance levels should be nearly identical, and the half of the garage that finishes higher in points will likely be the one that ends the year with the least amount of DNFs (as it has been the past two seasons).
There will also be some competition between the teams to be the better half of Nissan Motorsport — and that inter-team competition might just improve all four Nissan cars against the rest of the field in 2015.
For more information on Nissan Motorsport, visit http://www.nissanmotorsport.com.au/.
For more information on the V8 Supercars Championship, visit http://www.v8supercars.com.au/.
