A front-wheel drive Le Mans race car? Sounds a little far-fetched doesn’t it? Well, Nissan has developed such a racer in the form of the front-engined, front-wheel drive GT-R LM Nismo. It will be the first front-wheel drive car to be racing in the LMP1 category in the history of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Nismo University made this video to explain exactly why they’ve chosen the unique (or silly, to some) setup. A lot of science and thought have gone into the development of the car, and it looks like Nissan genuinely feels that a front-wheel drive layout is more capable on the track, specifically Le Mans’ Circuit de la Sarthe.
Watch the video above to get a better understanding of Nissan Motorsports’ decision, and tell us what you think. Could this really be a race-winning recipe?
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I like this. Since most road technology developed from racing, maybe new stuff will come out for the humble FWD cars.
But “Experts” on these comment section will bash a FWD car the same way they bash torsion beam rear setup, never mind the fact that there are some really well-engineered FWD and torsion beam setups..
Yes, there are good FWD vehicles.
I have yet to learn about good torsion beam rear setups, can you educate us, please? Thank you.
Previous Alphard use rear torsion beam, now they changed to multilink if not mistaken. They moved backwards?
Good torsion beam setups are seen in European cars, including those that go really fast around the track e.g. Renault Megane.
Torsion beam’s main advantages are its low space requirements and fewer number of moving parts and bushes. But this also results in reduced degrees of freedom. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though.
Torsion beams or twist beams do not have varying toe angles throughout the range of motion, but it has semi-independent camber variations.
If both wheels are subject to the same deflection direction, there will be no camber difference so the contact patch and perceived motion/response of the rear setup remains the same, which could result in better comfort in low speed drives or over gentle undulations.
If one wheel is deflected up the other is not, the camber will vary immediately to be opposite of one another – negative camber for the rising wheel, while the planted wheel will be “forced” to have a positive camber. For a stiff twist rate setup, this will result in a gradual loss of traction at the rear as the vehicle’s roll rate increases towards and around the apex of the corner, thus introducing a bit of “oversteer” round a bend.. Basically, the rear can be made to be intentionally “less sticky” on a FWD car so that instead of just understeering, the rear will actually want to slide out towards the outside of the bend.
The vehicle will still be controllable, though.. because as with any FWD car, if the rear feels twitchy, you just have to back off from the throttle to let understeer be dominant again. With semi-independent camber variations and no (or very limited) toe variations, this effect becomes more predictable vs that of fully independent setups.
The proof is in the pudding – Renault Megane RS and the upcoming Honda Civic Type R do not seem to suffer from excessive understeer despite the high engine output to the front wheels.
For passenger cars, the twist beam won’t be set up for such characteristics. It”s only good for enabling the rear passenger compartment to be stretched further back for a given wheelbase, and the boot space to be deeper due to the reduced complexity of the rear setup.
All good and well until I read the part you tell people to back off the throttle when the tail gets twitchy.
Good luck with that. You’d likely get intimate with a ravine or armco then understeer.
Its one thing to just know things and another to know how to drive.
Thanks!
some said for so many decades honda engineers already implemented it on the civic type R..
Could this FWD layout contribute to better fuel consumption, tyre wear management and perhaps, maybe some aero benefits? Remember, Le Mans is not really a technical track. It’s more of a fast flowing high speed track. This year’s 24 Hours Le Mans will be very interesting because of Nissan!
Remember high school physics, the chapter about ramps and incline planes.. It takes less force to PULL a mass up an incline than to PUSH it up an incline. For the same reason, we will use less force to PULL a vehicle along a road than to PUSH it along a road for the given amount of distance traveled. In terms of physics and forces, FWD is more efficient, but in terms of handling and subjective vehicular experience, RWD is superior.
This is another possibility why they would choose to use a FWD setup besides increased frontal downforce and eliminating spin-outs.. the energy efficiency of FWD vs RWD.
Those front tyres are going to take a bashing- drive, brake and steer a 550hp car. Wonder if they will have to pit more often for fresh front tyres..? If so, it may negate the effect of the extra straight line speed the driver is talking about.