Well not the best finish but it’s the first race they’ve entered and finished and only the second race total in the brand new 2010 GT1 specification FIA GT Nissan GT-R at the Oschersleben Circuit this weekend. The Nismo team qualified in 10th place on the starting grid and were happy with the car’s performance:

“The Nissan GTR feels good around the tight corners and we were able to improve the car steadily in the run up for qualifying. Finally we ended up in P10, this time only 2.8 seconds away from Pole Position.” said Michael Krumm “That sounds a lot but considering our cars disadvantage by running the 2010 regulation and the additional 40kg or additional weight that we had to take on for Oschersleben, it was quite a good effort.”

The race began with Krumm driving in the dry but by lap 17 the rain began to fall on parts of the circuit. The Nissan pit in at lap 33 to switch to wet tires and Darren Turner took the wheel. During early racing the GT-R had advanced as much as 8th position.

Unfortunately, at turn 3 on lap 57 the GT-R spun and ended up in the gravel. This cost the valuable time and race positions, they pitted to swap drivers again and the car went back out to finish.

The GT-R finished the race in 14th place outright. Not amazing but they finished and that was the goal for today’s race and they have to be pleased with it.

“Our target for [the race] remains unchanged, we will mainly focus on bringing the car home, something that we unfortunately were not able to do in Silverstone at the first race.” said Michael Krumm

Photos: (C) DPPI via FIA GT

FIA GT Championship, Motor Racing 2010 gt, fia, FIA GT Championship, gt-r, gt1, gtr, nissan, r35

Finally another weekend of GT-R motorsports has kicked off, firstly qualifying for SuperGT Series 2009 round 4 at Sepang Circuit in Malaysia. After a too long, 6 week break between round 3 and this weekend, we get to see the GT500 Nissan GT-Rs doing what they do best – that is – grabbing pole position during qualifying.

It’s good news for the #1 MOTUL Autech GT-R as they’ve managed just that with a best lap of 1:58.124 in the heated SuperLap qualifier round. Also, even more good news for Hasemi Racing with their #3 Tomica EBBRO GT-R in 2nd spot on the grid after setting a best lap just hundreths of a second away from first at 1:58.195.

Back in 7th places we see the #24 HIS ADVAN Kondo Racing GT-R with the #12 IMPUL Calsonic GT-R back in 10th place wrapping up the last of the GT-Rs.

With wet weather sitting in later in the day today, who knows what tomorrow will bring and teams will need to be ready for anything.

Motor Racing, Super GT gt-r, gt500, gtr, malaysia, motorsports, nissan, r35, sepang, Super GT

SouthSide Performance have been tackling the GT-Rs throttle bodies in a quest for a larger opening and a more responsive drive. SouthSide aren’t the first to go down this path as even Nissan has recognized that the base model GT-R could do with some improvement on the throttle body side of things when refining the SpecV’s version. These should be quite a bit larger though.

These billet items should be released soon as they’re currently in the final testing phases.

Link: SouthSide Performance Website

Parts / Manufacturers, South Side Performance gt-r, gtr, nissan, r35, southside, specv, ssp, throttle body, tuning

While I had my doubts after seeing the Abflug concept at Tokyo AutoSalon 2009 that this would ever come together, the styling masters at Abflug have done it.

They’ve built some unique pieces here. The front lip is my favorite part and the subtle sideskirts work in the car’s favor. The riskiest part – the rear diffuser and underspoiler ALMOST works but seems ultimately spoiled by the mesh sides and corners.

The full aero kit consists of the front lip spoiler, sideskirts, rear diffuser / underspoiler and rear wing. A full front bumper is planned for earl 2010.

Thanks to advan for the tip.

Link: Abflug Website

Parts / Manufacturers, Tuner News abflug, aero, body kit, gt-r, gtr, nissan, r35

This month marks the end of quite a long development process for the much anticipated Haltech fully programmable ECU for the Nissan R35 GT-R. The guys have released it now for Japanese and Australian delivered GT-R models with US delivered models to follow shortly.

High Performance Fuel and Ignition ECU for Nissan R35 GTR

The next generation in engine management. Purpose built for Nissan’s supercar, the Platinum Pro R35 GTR ECU is a fully programmable ECU interfacing directly with all the standard Nissan sensors and on board computer systems, taking control of all the essential engine management tasks such as fuel delivery, ignition timing, boost levels, camshaft positioning and correction maps.

The Platinum Pro R35 GTR ECU even interfaces with the factory Nissan CAN Bus for on board diagnostic and troubleshooting. The Platinum Pro R35 GTR ECU unlocks the limitless potential of Nissan’s VR Powerhouse.

Features:

• Sequential Fuel Control
• Direct Fire Ignition Control
• Variable Camshaft postion mapping
• Knock Detection
• Engine Rev Limiter
• Closed loop boost control
• Launch control
• Closed loop wideband 02 control
• On board data logging
• Speed density, Alpha-N or MAF tuning
• Additional user definable inputs and outputs
• Windows Software

In terms of those GT-R owners who have managed to extract big power with existing technologies (such as OE ECU re-flashes) you’ll be well aware of the protective nature of the stock ECU. Boost cuts, limp modes and so on all hold you back whether you’re on the drag strip, circuit or even occasionally just hard driving on the street. To utilise the GT-R’s VR38 to it’s full potential, this should be on your wish list.

For those of you chasing hard data and results, I point you in the direction of the recent NAGTROC thread where “One Lap of America” winner Underpressure has been tuning and testing with his Haltech unit already and has published some pretty amazing in-progress dyno charts.

Link: Haltech Website
Link: NAGTROC thread – Results from Haltech Tune In-Progress

Haltech, Parts / Manufacturers, Tuner News ecu, gt-r, gtr, Haltech, nissan, platinum, r35, tuning

We’re happy to hear that STILLEN has completed development on these beefy looking sway bar upgrades for the GT-R. These feature a 28 – 31% stiffness increase over the stock items but also feature 5-way adjustment. This gives the owner a great opportunity to fine tune the handling of the GT-R.

Adjustments range from slightly stiffer than stock to extremely stiff which according to STILLEN really keeps the car flat through the turns.

A great way to handle some of the GT-R’s tendancy to understeer, they’re available now for $1049. Check out the STILLEN website and product page for more details and ordering info.

Link: STILLEN Release

Parts / Manufacturers, STILLEN gt-r, gtr, nissan, r35, STILLEN, swaybars

June is GT-R month for HKS as they chose to announce a few more additions to their lineup of GT-R tuning products. We saw the famous HKS “pretzel” LEGAMAX Premium exhaust almost 12 months ago now so it’s about time to see the next logical step in the HKS exhaust evolution. Naturally the full titanium version.

The HKS Superior Spec-R Exhaust is the top of the range exhaust for the Nissan GT-R. It’s titanium construction results in a 10kg weight reduction over the stock setup. It comes with a few cool features like slitted tips to lower noise output and larger diameter piping. No exact pricing or availability dates yet.

Next up is the HKS Racing Suction Reloaded air filter / intake piping kit. This twin filter kit replaces the GT-R airboxes and mounts foam type filters up front to get access to the cool outside air. It’s said to improve performance in the mid range and enhance the sound of your GT-R. These ones are already available in stock at MVPGTR.com.

Link: HKS Racing Suction Reloaded @ MVPGTR.com
Link: HKS Superior Spec R Exhaust @ SHH Proshop Blog

HKS, Parts / Manufacturers, Tuner News e35, exhaust, gt-r, gtr, HKS, intake, nissan, titanium

HKS’s GT570 Racing kit has been a huge hit with GT-R owners both in Japan and overseas. HKS have extended the kit before to suit street cars by producting the GT570 Sports package which shipped with high-flow catalytic converters to keep emissions in check. Now they’ve gone another step further and produced a second pair of packages known as the GT600 Racing and GT600 Sports kits.

The GT600 package evolves the existing GT570 kit and in fact ships with all the same equipment plus a few extras. Those include the HKS Premium Suction kit – large diameter OE intake piping replacements – a fuel regulator and a fuel pump. The GT600 kit also ships with the HKS Superior Finisher fitted with an exclusive GT600 badge. A small dyno comparison chart of all four kits can be seen below:

The pricing for each kit has also been released, for the GT600 Racing package you get three options. The GT600 Racing base package is 882,000 yen. For the less obnoxious “Silencer Version” fitted with an additional muffler in the exhaust you will pay 903,000 yen. Finally for the LEGAMAX Premium exhaust version you’re looking at 1,155,000 yen all up.

If being street legal is your thing, then you’ll opt for the GT600 Sports package at 1,197,000 yen for the base package for 1,470,000 yen including the LEGAMAX Premium exhaust.

The GT570 Racing package base price is 598,500 yen so you’re looking at ponying up just under 300,000 yen more for the GT600 Racing kit that most buyers will go for.

Link: HKS Website / HKS GT600 Release

HKS, Parts / Manufacturers, Tuner News exhaust, gt-r, GT570, GT600, gtr, HKS, intake, Motor Racing, nissan, r35, sports

There’s already a variety of turbo downpipes on the market but move over and find room for one more. This one stands out of the crowd though since it’s the new AMS cast downpipes. We’ve been following AMS’s progress on these and are pleased to see how they finally turned out.

Featuring cast end sections with stainless centers AMS say these are good for a huge increase in power (20hp peak, 25hp mid-range) and response when combined with the AMS turbo upgrades. They should do great things for stock turbo’d GT-Rs as well.

Check out the dyno graph in the gallery below showing power and torque on the same graph. The red line is AMS turbos with stock downpipes while the blue line is with the AMS cast downpipes. Quite a startling result.

Link: Discussion thread over on NAGTROC
Link: AMS Performance Website

AMS Performance, Parts / Manufacturers, Tuner News AMS Performance, downpipes, dump pipes, exhaust, gt-r, gtr, nissan, r35, turbos

It’s not all news about performance parts and motor racing here, sometimes there is drama in the GT-R scene. While much of it goes on behind closed doors and in non public forums, this allegation caught my eye.

When Zele International had completed and debuted their world renowned Nissan GT-R aero parts back in January 2008, they had a mission to make the parts available globally. To do so, they signed up with a range of well known, well established businesses in a dealership model. So now, we can enjoy some very well known, local faces, who can get us our favourite Zele Performance parts all backed by Zele’s after sales service. All good so far.

It seems, according to Zele’s most recent website update, that one such dealership in the UK may have abused their dealership status to import Zele Products at a very low cost for “promotional” purposes, have them copied, modified slightly and then sold as their own product. Photos of the “new” parts fitted to one of the dealers own cars were taken at a local event and then published on a local UK forum. From the photographs its easy to see a resemblance.

The sad part about this is the company in question is generally thought to be a well respected business. Most certainly not a fly-by night web site. Copying parts is the cheap option these days and when no R&D is necessary your margins are higher. It’s really up to the buying public to vote with their money and choose to buy genuine items.

You can read the whole announcement by following the link below and the parts in question in the photos attached.

A very sad day indeed.

Link: Zele Revoke Authorized Dealership Website Update

GTR News, Zele International aero, copy products, gt-r, gtr, nissan, r35, zele