SPEEDCAFE: Miyatani-san, having not been directly involved until now, I’m interested in your view of how the project as a whole has worked to date.
MIYATANI: The project itself started in a little bit of a rush, I’d have to say. It was strongly pushed by the Nissan Australia team to promote the image of the Altima as a sports sedan, not just a luxury car. I think it was the right choice, but execution wise we did start a little bit in a rush, so we are trying to fix the situation.Each race (series) has its own unique kind of character. The engines, the aerodynamics, the chassis, the driver, the team operations, everything, you need to have at a certain level.For example, in Super GT in Japan, if you have a good engine or a good driver, just one piece of it isn’t enough to win the race. You need local expertise and knowledge about how you should be fighting in the race.For the Australian race, honestly, Nismo doesn’t have a real local knowledge for this race in order to win. So we are trying to help the areas we can help, particularly on the engine side, because it’s our engine.
COX: Miyatani-san makes a very good point about each championship being different. The thing that I’ve noticed the second time I’ve come (having attended the Clipsal 500 earlier in the season) is the myopic nature of Holden.In Super GT (in Japan) Nissan, Toyota and Honda know that each are an important player. All three have to be in the championship and all three have to be fighting at the front. All three have to have the right resources, the right drivers, the right engineers, the right tyres and go to the right race circuits that suit all the manufacturers.In the DTM, Mercedes and Audi wooed BMW for years trying to get them back in. When they did come back, it was that much of a level playing field that BMW won the championship first year back.But you go down to Australia and there’s this view that Nissan can’t win for the first two years because it needs to do the hard work. Well we’ve done the hard work. We’ve put a huge amount of money in, we’ve put a huge amount of resource, we’ve got a good team with good drivers and good engineers, and yet the view of Holden is that ‘they need to do the hard yards’ and that they’d rather us not be there.It’s no problem for Holden, they can go and have a one make series. The attitude of the championship, the organisers and the manufacturers, specifically Holden, need to look at the best practice in the DTM and Super GT in working together with manufacturers.At the moment it’s this historic ‘I’m red, you’re blue and never the twain shall meet, we can’t work together’. Well ok, the championship will die in five years then. Holden need to really wind it in and welcome the new manufacturers. Otherwise we’ll walk away again.
