Williams’ technology offshoot, Williams Advanced Engineering, will join the engineering development team from NISMO to help develop new Williams-enhanced Nissans that will start launching from as early as next year.
Williams Advanced Engineering has a proven record of bringing Formula One technology to the road relatively quickly and will aid NISMO mainly in the areas of aerodynamics, simulation and material science.
Unfortunately, no mention of specific models was made during today’s announcement, though we already know of several new NISMO models in the works. The most logical choice for the first Williams-enhanced model would be the Nissan GT-R NISMO due out next year. The car is tipped to deliver more than 570 horsepower and come with plenty of carbon fiber to help shed the pounds.
NISMO is also planning a more extreme level of tuning which it plans to group under the “RS” label, so it’s possible that these may end up receiving the first round of Williams upgrades.
At this point you may also be wondering why NISMO didn’t team up with Red Bull Racing, which Nissan’s upmarket division Infiniti is a primary sponsor of. The boss of NISMO, Shoichi Miyatani, explains that it was Williams’ past performance in the area of road car development that was the key reason it was picked over other partners including its Formula One rival Red Bull Racing.
“Williams have a proven history of making racing technology benefit road cars, and we look forward to starting this relationship during a period of intensive product development for NISMO,” Miyatani said.
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