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NISSAN driver Todd Kelly secretly hired a major metropolitan airport in Melbourne to help turn his car labelled a "flying fridge'' last year into a V8 rocket ship for the 2014 season.
The Sunday Telegraph can exclusively reveal the extraordinary lengths Nissan Motorsport have gone to ensure they soar into the championship with team owner and driver Kelly drag racing Jetstar planes on the runaway at Avalon airport.
The four Nissan Altima's — brand new to the sport last year — severely lacked straight-line speed last season thanks to a poor aerodynamic package that saw the V8 Supercars compared to a fridge.
Nissan went all out over the off-season to give their multi-million dollar investment a chance of success with aerodynamic experts in both Europe and Japan helping redesign the car with state-of-the-art software used for spaceships aeroplanes, and Formula One cars.
But it was the testing phase of the no-expense spared operation that left early morning flyers stunned.
"He was driving the car at 300kph on the runway at Avalon,'' said a team member who asked to remain unnamed.
"It was an early morning exercise with the testing down between 4am and 6am. But there were times were Todd was just about directing aircraft to where they should land.''
The team shunned the V8 Supercar test facility with the team unhappy with last year's official sanctioned parity tests.
"The problem there was you could only get up to 200kph on their runway,'' said the team member.
"The aerodynamic properties are most important at the higher speeds and that is where we suffered last year.''
So what Kelly do? Looking for a piece of road, flat enough and long enough for his to hit top-speed, he hired Melbourne's second biggest airport.
The Jack Daniel's Nissan on the track in Adelaide. Picture: /Getty Images Source: Getty Images
Brother Rick Kelly, also a Nissan driver and team-owner, is confident the changes to the car will help them buy into the 2014 V8 Supercars championship fight.
"The guys at Nissan Motorsport have put in a huge amount of work over the last six months to identify what on our car is hindering us in a straight line,'' Kelly said.
"We have had to undertake a lot of research to work out exactly what it was. We have worked that out and implemented those changes over the Christmas break so it is now time to hit the track and see where it was out.''
Kelly confirmed the design process was a muli-national operation that stretched from Europe to Asia.
"We have done a lot of it ourselves but we have had a lot of assistance from Nissan and NISMO,'' Kelly said.
"We have had more help from Europe more than anything and one of the resources they provided was assisting us with information on how to make the aero quicker.
"We are all a lot wiser 12 months down the track but we also have new cars coming in like the Volvo. We are confident we have made a lot of progress but we need to race now to see exactly where we are at.''
Kelly said he was not motivated by beating new manufacturer Volvo.
"Our mission is simply to get the most out of what we have,'' Kelly said.
"We are confident that we have now matched the others in terms of straight-line speed.''
Kelly was not expecting rival team to claim Nissan had received an unfair advantage with the sport's governing body approving the redesigned aero package.
"And if they do whinge it is up to V8 Supercars to make sure that we are all equal and we all have a fair shot,'' Kelly said.
"We need to have the opportunity to win if we go out there and do our best. I think it will still be a big ask for us to win a championship this year. While we have been working on our aero and our engine, they other's have been working on suspension and other areas that they haven't had time to work. All I want to do is get to the end of the year and say we have been able to get the most out of our car. If this year I can get into the top six, that will put us in a great position for 2015.''
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