NISSAN-POWERED PROTOTYPES DO BATTLE IN THE US AND EUROPE

The Nissan-powered prototype teams of byKolles and ESM have taken on two very different tracks on two continents this past weekend.

The ESM team raced through the bumps on the grueling Belle Isle street circuit, while byKOLLES was at the official 24 Hours of Le Mans test day at the famous Circuit de la Sarthe.

The Detroit, Belle Isle race weekend got off to a good start for the ESM squad, with Pipo Derani driving his No. 22 Nissan DPi machine to pole position despite it being his very first visit to the track.

However, the car was plagued with a steering wheel-related gear shifting issue that necessitated an early, unscheduled pit stop. Derani and teammate Johannes van Overbeek would race their off-sequence strategy to a seventh-place finish.

"I feel gutted we didn’t manage to come home with a better result, because the team did an amazing job this weekend, making the car fast and giving me a car for pole position," Derani said.

"Unfortunately, an issue with our car steering wheel made us pit early and our strategy was messed up.

"Being a short race, that’s a hard thing to recover from. We’ll work hard and come back strong for the next one.”

Scott Sharp moved from 11th on the grid to eighth position before handing the No. 2 car over to teammate Ryan Dalziel. Despite late-race contact, Dalziel kept pushing and brought home a fourth-place finish for the team.

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Across the Atlantic Ocean, the Nissan-powered byKOLLES team readied for the most famous race in all of sports car racing, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The healthy 60-car field tackled two test sessions on Sunday at Circuit de la Sarthe, with the byKOLLES team finishing seventh fastest with Dominik Kraihamer, Tom Dillmann and Oliver Webb at the wheel.

The byKOLLES crew will be back at Circuit de la Sarthe for the 24-hour itself starting with practice on Wednesday, June 13 before the start of the race on June 16.

The ESM squad will also tackle an endurance race next, the Six Hours of the Glen at Watkins Glen from June 28 to July 1.