Nissan GT-R's UK competition debut

By Ben Barry

First Official Pictures

04 July 2008 14:19

The new R35 Nissan GT-R makes its British competitive debut at Oulton Park on Saturday July 5. The car, a personal import brought in from Japan by UK tuning firm RC Developments, will be entered in stock trim in the clubman category of the Time Attack series. The series pits an eclectic Gran Turismo grid of cars against the clock – rather than directly against each other – to set the fastest lap time.

Nissan has made much of the GT-R’s tough-to-crack ECU – making it far harder to tune than the R34 Skyline of the 1990s – but RC are in talks with Cobb Tuning in the US and British firm Ecu Tech and are already developing a freer-flowing exhaust system.

It’s not committing to power targets yet, but the company has form, extracting more than 900bhp from a trackday Mitsubishi Evo and hopes to use the weekend as a preliminary evaluation session before building the UK’s ultimate track-spec GT-R.

We already know that the GT-R is an incredible machine, but it’ll be interesting to see just what potential its 3.8-litre twin turbo V6 holds and if, in race-spec, it can outpunch the 1000bhp outputs of previous R34s. Watch this space.

By Ben Barry