Nissan open to more WEC outings for ZEOD Le Mans 24 Hours racer

The petrol-electric hybrid, which is scheduled to make its race debut at Le Mans on June 14/15 in the Garage 56 grid slot reserved for experimental machinery, could contest the Fuji and Interlagos WEC rounds in October and November respectively.

Nissan global motorsport boss Darren Cox, who helped launch the Japanese manufacturer's 2015 LMP1 assault last week, said: "We are talking about doing some WEC rounds and the invite from the Automobile Club de l'Ouest [the WEC promoter] is there.

"Fuji is the obvious one, but also we would love to do Brazil because it is a massively important market for us, though there is an issue over the number of garages there," he told AUTOSPORT.

Cox explained that the plan for the ZEOD over the remainder of the season, beyond an appearance at the Goodwood Festival of Speed at the end of June, will be formulated after Le Mans.

"It all depends on what happens at Le Mans: we haven't gone any freight booked, but we are a full-season entry in the WEC and we have paid for it," he said.

Cox stressed that further races for the ZEOD would not affect Nissan's LMP1 preparations for next year because different groups are running the two programmes: RML, in the UK, has spearheaded development of the ZEOD, but will not have a major involvement in the P1 programme.

One of two ZEODs now in existence was testing at the Bruntingthorpe proving ground this week while the other was transported to Le Mans for the test day on Sunday where it will be driven by Wolfgang Reip and Tommy Erdos.

Erdos, formerly a regular with the RML team in the LMP2 category, is standing in for ZEOD race drivers Satoshi Motoyama and Lucas Ordonez, who are racing in Super GT at Autopolis this weekend.

It was testing different configurations of battery before making a final decision on what specification will be run at the test day.