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[h=2]Sharp charts progress for Nissan Onroak DPis[/h] Tuesday, 09 May 2017



By Marshall Pruett (words & images)

Tequila Patron ESM owners Scott Sharp and Ed Brown knew they were undertaking a formidable task by commissioning their own Daytona Prototype international model.

The ambitious project brought French LMP2 constructor Onroak together with NISMO, Nissan's factory racing arm, to create the Nissan Onroak DPi using the Ligier JS P217 chassis and a production-based 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 engine from the Nissan GT-R. The first of the angular creations, designed to take on Cadillac and Mazda in IMSA's new-for-2017 Prototype class, was delivered to ESM's Florida base just days before Christmas; the first race of the season was little more than a month away.
Brutally short on testing mileage, the Nissan Onroak DPis stumbled, broke gearboxes and blew up in public during IMSA's Roar Before the 24 precursor to the big Rolex 24 at Daytona curtain raiser, and based on the escalating problems the cars faced, expectations were set dreadfully low for the race.
And then something interesting happened. The Cadillacs were in a class all their own – and continue to be after winning all four of the opening rounds – but the Nissans, and the No. 2 ESM chassis in particular, defied the expectations for a smoky, early end to its debut. Only three laps down after 24 hours of racing, the No. 2, with Sharp, Ryan Dalziel and Pipo Derani behind the wheel, finished fourth overall and second in the informal "Non-Cadillac DPi" class.
Fortunes were less kind at Round 2 in Sebring, but the surprising pace and reliability was back at Long Beach for Round 3 where Dalziel and Sharp took a fighting second overall to the dominant Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac (pictured, Richard Dole/LAT photo). And it looked as if another podium result was on the cards last weekend at Circuit of The Americas until Dalziel's No. 2 met a fiery end with less than 10 minutes left on the clock. The sister No. 22 car, which dealt with the bulk of the teething problems through Long Beach, soldiered home to fifth at COTA – its best finish of the year.
Few would have predicted the Nissan DPis would be mixing it up with Cadillacs this early in the year, and if anything, the ESM team, along with Onroak and NISMO, deserve credit for getting close to Cadillac, which had a huge head start in testing with its DPi-V.R.









"You've got to take your hat off to Cadillac. They jumped on this DPi concept really early, got the cars done early, and were out hitting the track way early. And that always pays dividends, and it has," Sharp told RACER while referring to the four-month testing lead enjoyed by Cadillac.
"From our perspective, we've been playing a serious role of catch up. Obviously, there were a lot of reliability issues early on, which hurt testing, hurt races. Long Beach was a huge shot in the arm to the team for just everyone involved, and it was the first big morale booster after all the months of hard work."
As the three Cadillac entries spend most of their time perfecting chassis and aerodynamic setups at each track, Sharp says ESM is busy working through the basics of what the Nissan Onroak DPis need to be competitive.
"I think we are getting closer there, but I still think we have a ways to go," he added. "Certain tracks I think are going to be more appealing to our package than others, and we're having to find that out as we go. COTA isn't very appealing to our package, which is fine, maybe the next one will be; you go from one to the other. Second at Long Beach was great, for example, but I don't think it is indicative really of quite where we are going into each weekend."