Comment: Nissan doesn't need to race again in the WEC in 2015

What might the GT-R LM NISMO achieve should it race again in 2015? Very little, I would suggest.

That's because the GT-R LM cannot race this season in the form in which it was conceived: it has been homologated in the two-megajoule hybrid class, rather than the planned 8MJ division, and that's where it has to stay until next season.

For that reason, it has no chance of being able to show the potential of which its creator, Ben Bowlby, and Nissan global motorsport boss Darren Cox have talked so effusively.

Much more important than anything Nissan might achieve on the race track in the WEC this season is the development programme going on behind the scenes to allow the GT-R LM to run as intended.

And that means being able to deploy energy retrieved via the Nissan's fully-mechanical hybrid system to its skinny rear tyres.

That will allow Bowlby and his team to piece the GT-R LM concept back together after it slowly fell apart in the run-up to the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.

Regenerating - and deploying - the higher megajoule figure is not only worth multiple seconds around the long Le Mans lap, but it will allow Nissan to overcome the braking issues that dogged the car on its debut at the 24 Hours in June.

Smaller conventional brakes will allow for smaller diameter wheels and the higher-profile tyres demanded by the front-wheel-drive concept.

The gains start to add up, even before one factors in the benefits of four-wheel-drive and natural development of a car that was woefully short of miles before Le Mans.

That's why the future of the GT-R LM project should hang on Bowlby and his team proving to Nissan senior management their ideas are sound, not the car's performances in strangled form in a handful of end-of-season six-hour WEC races.

If the concept can be made to work, then the Nissan will gain seconds by the bucketload; if it can't, I would suggest the GT-R LM programme as we know it will kick the bucket.