Nissan has withdrawn its entry from next year's FIA World Endurance Championship, according to Jamie Klein of MOTORSPORT. The Japanese manufacturer returned to top-flight sportscar racing this year for the first time since '99 with its "innovative front-engined GT-R LM NISMO." Despite being originally entered for the full WEC season, Nissan chose to pull out of the first two rounds "in order to better prepare for the Le Mans 24 Hours," to date the only race in which the car has appeared. With no functioning hybrid system, it lapped "well off the pace" of its LMP1 competitors, qualifying 25 seconds slower, with none of the team's three cars classified at the finish. The decision was subsequently taken to withdraw from the rest of the WEC schedule, which was followed by the news that the architect of the "ambitious project," Darren Cox, "would part ways with Nissan." And now, despite testing the car as recently as this month, Nissan has "reached the conclusion that the car would not ever be capable of matching the performance" of LMP1 rivals Porsche, Audi and Toyota (MOTORSPORT, 12/22).
