Nissan Ginetta G55
The thunder of two mighty Nissan VK45 V8 engines spiced up this year’s Killarney 9-Hour Endurance Race. Team Africa Le Mans fitted two of their four GinettaG55 cars with these hot Nissan engines.
The VK45 is a V8 naturally aspirated aluminium DOHC 4-valve engine. It is a development of the VQ V6, rather than the previous VH V8 engine. This engine also features a new variable intake manifold, newly designed heads and a larger drive-by-wire throttle chamber.
Although it has a 4.5-litre displacement, these two engines have been destroked to 4.3-litre to improve reliability.
While you will not find this beast of an engine in any Nissan sold in South Africa, Nissan’s engineering team transfers the knowledge and skills required to create such engines back into the development of normal car engines. So any Nissan you buy will have some of the racing DNA of this V8 in it.
The Ginetta G55 is a specialist sports car, built by Ginetta Cars in Leeds since 2011. It is built to FIA GT3 regulations, one of the most popular and diverse racing classes in the world. Although originally fitted with a Ford V6 engine, this popular racer has been fitted with many different engines for different races over the years.
The Drivers
Team Africa Le Mans car 505 was driven by the father and sons super team Pirro – Emanuele, Cris and Goffredo (Goofy).
Emanuele won Le Mans five times with Audi, drove for Benetton and Dallara F1 teams and was the test driver for McLaren in the F1 championship days of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. He is a two-time ALMS sports-car champion and has won at Goodwood and Macau. He is also an FIA steward.
His son Cris is a senior engineer at Alfa F1, while Goofy, also a graduate of the prestigious Cranfield engineering school, currently works in the Italian F3 Championship.
Car 50 was driven by Anthony Reid, saloon car star Hennie Groenewald and Murray Shepherd.
Reid has a Le Mans 3rd place under his belt and competed in the British GT3 series against the likes of Damon Hill. He was once offered to drive with Jordan F1. In the ‘90s and 2000s, he was one of the highest-paid saloon car racers in the world.
Groenewald has won the Wesbank V8 Supercars series three times and he has competed internationally in various formulae, including Formula 3. Shepherd, although still young, has a wealth of experience in various kinds of races and is seen as a star of the future.
Team Africa Le Mans
Team Africa Le Mans is a South Africa-based GT racing team run by volunteers from Africa. It uses top driving talent. The team’s aim is to carry the continent’s flag into international competition.
The team made its international debut in 2016 in the Paul Ricard 24-hour race, and it is the first team from Africa to be invited to the Road to Le Mans race. It will use an all-African pit crew from South Africa and Kenya.
The Team promotes the STOP! Poaching initiative, with a focus on the plight of the Pangolin.
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Image sourced from WPMC
