AndreaModa wrote:Well they've not thrown in the towel just yet, but you'd have to say it's not looking great is it? I suspect BMW took one look at Nissan's struggles and that made their minds up that LMP1 wasn't for them.
A real shame to be honest, it's quite a big setback for the WEC because whilst the regulations are open, there is still a significant investment required, and that may well put off other manufacturers in future. It's hard to see Toyota hanging around for more than a year or two longer after their complaints about costs. If they have another poor year in 2016 I could see them pulling the plug and then we're down the VAG show.
Under the current regulations, the only real course of action that Nissan had was to effectively pull out.
With development of the hybrid drive system completely locked down during a season, plus the strict testing restrictions (I think that Nissan has already burned through most of its allowance for private testing), there is essentially no way that the car can be developed sufficiently in order to make it even vaguely competitive.
At best, therefore, Nissan can only really hope to withdraw, thereby freeing themselves from the development lockdown and to go through the development program that this car really needed in the first place in order to be competitive (Nissan's own engineers have admitted that the car really shouldn't have been launched until 2016, but was brought out a year early in order to try and capitalise in the publicity generated by their "Garage 56" entry in 2014).
That said, overall things do not look especially promising - the fact that Nissan are saying their entry is "depending on the progress of the test programme" suggests they are giving themselves wriggle room to quietly drop the whole program. After all, they will probably have to axe their support for the LMP2 category under the ACO's 2017 regulations, so without the LMP1 program there is little to tie Nissan to the WEC.
AndreaModa, in the case of BMW, their response when asked about an LMP1 program was to state, quite bluntly, that the current LMP1 regulations lack any marketing value for them, since it does not fit with the brand that they want to promote (their "i" electric vehicle division) and therefore holds no interest for them.
In some ways, the TS050 has a fair amount riding on it for next year - if Toyota's new can cannot compete with either VW entry, the likelihood of Toyota withdrawing will certainly go up. All in all, the ACO's policies - which were written with the explicit intention of luring more manufacturers in - might in fact end up pushing manufacturers out in the longer run.