Nissan: 1990 Le Mans 24 Hours pole winner Mark Blundell reunites with his Nissan R90CK at Circuit de la Sarthe

Nissan GT-R LM NISMO Newsroom

LE MANS, France – Tonight at Le Mans, 1990 Le Mans 24 Hours pole winner Mark Blundell was reunited with his Nissan R90CK at Circuit de la Sarthe at the ACO President’s dinner held on the circuit just before the start finish line. Images from tonight’s reunion are to the left.

Nissan scored the pole here at Le Mans 25 years ago with Mark Blundell behind the wheel. The cars 25 years ago were dramatically different. Check out the dimensions between Nissan’s 1990 Le Mans assault and our GT-R LM NISMO of 2015 in the graphic below.


Click image to enlarge

 

Below, we take a look back at this historic Nissan.

 

1990 / Nissan R90CP/CK

  • Length / Width / Height: 4,800 / 1,990 / 1,100mm
  • Vehicle Weight: 900kg
  • Maximum Engine Output: Over 800ps/7,600rpm

For the 1990 Group C races, Nissan made efforts to improve the reliability of the R89C, which had proven its speed during the previous season. Improvements included a modified chassis, installation of the VRH35 model VRH35Z engine and a cowling designed by Nissan Performance Technology (NPTI) that was built in-house at Nissan. Due to this the new model R90CP, despite being based on the previous year’s model, had 70 percent of its parts manufactured by Nissan and NISMO. Another feature of the cars was the use of carbon-disco brakes manufactured by Brembo S.p.a. Two R90CP cars were entered in the 1990 JSPC endurance race series – one under the Calsonic-Nissan Team driven by Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Toshio Suzuki under the YHP-Nissan Team driven by Masahiro Hasemi and Andres Olofsson.

Five R90CP cars (plus a pair of C89s) took on the challenge of the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1990, with one R90CP entry from NISMO, two European R90CK entries, and two American R90CP vehicles.

In qualifying for Le Mans, a Japan-built car took pole position for the first time ever – Mark Blundell putting in an astonishing lap aboard one of the European CK entries on the circuit featuring, for the first time, the two chicanes on the infamous Mulsanne Straight, despite that the pole position car posted a course record top speed of 366 km/h

Hopes were high for a first win by a Japanese car, but an unfortunate series of problems saw four of the R90CPs retired during the race, the only one to finish being the machine driven by Masahiro Hasemi, Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Toshio Suzuki, which finished in 5th place overall, at the time the highest ever result for a Japanese car and Japanese drivers.

 

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