Nissan set to forego pre-Darwin test

While a number of the front-running teams are using the gap between the Winton and Darwin rounds to use the second of three allocated test days, the factory Nissan squad is set to wait until after the Hidden Valley round for a proper test.

The team will get some track time next Tuesday when it runs Super2 driver Bryce Fullwood under the evaluation day regulations, but team boss and driver Todd Kelly confirmed to Motorsport.com that the second test day for its four cars will be kept on ice for now.

The team us understood to be in a phase of development as it looks to turn around a tough start to the new season, and while Kelly wouldn't confirm details on upgrades he did say that the reasoning for the delay in testing is to have enough new parts ready to run on all four Altimas. 

“There’s a fair bit of stuff happening at the moment that we’ll test at a later date,” he said.

“You really need to pick and choose your test days wisely, so we want to get everything finished and test as much as we can across four cars, rather than miss out and have to try and do it at race meetings.

“That’s our priority at the moment.”

The decisions comes in the midst of a difficult period for Nissan Motorsport in terms of results. Todd Kelly is currently the best-paced Altima driver in the points, sitting down in 14th ahead of brother and teammate Rick Kelly.

While the new construction tyre has been part of the problem, Todd Kelly also attributes the form to a run of circuits that simply don't click with the Altima package.

“We certainly finished the end of last year a little stronger than how we’ve started this year, and that’s down to a few things,” he added.

“We started off really well on the new tyre, but have come back a little bit. We’ve also been to a lot of our more challenging tracks early in the year, which has made it hard for us.

“From this point, with all the things that we’ve got in the pipeline for the cars and the fact that we’re starting to go to tracks where we generally go better at, we’ll start to see a little bit of improvement.

“Teams have taken it to a whole new level again this year, which is good, we’re trying to do the same thing. We’re not quite where we wanted to be at the last few rounds, but we’re certainly heading in the right direction.”