Timelines tight for Nissan upgrades

Nissan Motorsport will be racing against the clock to finish engine upgrades for the Altimas, as the team waits for parts to arrive from all around the world.

The enduros had been billed as the preferred debut for an improved VK56DE engine, but team boss and driver Todd Kelly admitted timelines would be tight with the first of the long distance races, the Wilson Security Sandown 500, just around the corner and new parts still to arrive at the workshop.

Kelly has shown improved form this season, sitting 13th behind stable-mate Michael Caruso. Brother Rick Kelly is the best-placed of the four in 10th after two podium finishes and an ARMOR ALL Pole Position.

The 35-year old and former Bathurst winner let his feelings be known at the last event at Queensland Raceway when his Altima failed just laps before the end of the race.

"All of the engines in the cars on the weekend were our current spec, which is what we've had since halfway through last year," Kelly told v8supercars.com.au.

"We think it was a random failure that didn't have anything to do with new components, which is just frustrating."

While Kelly was positive about his team's progress, they are now playing to waiting game as new parts arrive in Australia from suppliers.

"All of the parts are starting to flow in for the new spec stuff from all over the world," Kelly said. "We're hoping to get a lot of deliveries this week but unfortunately our whole upgrade program hinges on outside suppliers' delivery times.

"So at the moment we're not sure whether it will be Sandown or Bathurst when the whole thing will come together."

Kelly explained there was plenty that needed to be tested and rectified before the upgrades could feature in the V8 Supercars, though the cylinder head is what has been billed as the big-ticket item.

"Once we actually get all of the parts to be able to build an engine it's a huge amount of work to put it on the dyno and have half a chance of developing it, tuning it and optimising it because it's so different to what we've had up until now," he explained.

"It's not just a matter of bolting a cylinder head on and homologating it - we have to do all of our camshaft testing, exhaust system testing, inlet manifold testing and all of the combinations of those things that can be run.

"It's a pretty big job to settle on a package and then go and homologate, so that process is going to be extremely rushed in order to get it on the track as soon as we can.

"But it's still going to take a few weeks of solid testing - and that's assuming that we don't have any glitches with any of these new spec parts we've ordered as well. So it's a massive undertaking and a lot of things still have to go perfectly right for us."

One-thousand kilometres around Bathurst with a new engine?

"That's scary isn't it!" Kelly said.

"But we've done it every year, every year it's just turned out that we've pushed our timelines extremely hard and the last few years we've actually had an upgrade for Sandown and Bathurst and run."

Nissan Motorsport will use its single independent test day prior to the Wilson Security Sandown 500, which begins on September 11.

Kelly said earlier this year he believed the team would struggle in the long-distance races if the upgrades weren't available in time for the enduros.

Nissan did factor in the prestigious races last year, with James Moffat and Taz Douglas on the podium at Bathurst, and Michael Caruso and Dean Fiore at the Gold Coast 600.