Can back-to-front work for Nissan?

We were always expecting something different from Nissan. It has, after all, been building a reputation as something of an off-beat, even zany, manufacturer and it does employ arguably the most imaginative mind in motorsport in Ben Bowlby. But how different!

Nissan's GT-R LM NISMO turns conventional motorsport thinking on its head. Or rather back to front. The rumours had quietly gained momentum that the car was indeed front-engined and front-wheel-drive, but seeing - and reading - was truly believing.

That a manufacturer has decided to do something completely different in a bid to meet the challenge of the LMP1 rulebook is refreshing in the extreme in an era when racing cars are becoming increasingly homogonised.

Nissan's rivals in the 2015 World Endurance Championship - Audi, Toyota and Porsche – each chose different powertrain concepts with only front-axle kinetic-energy recovery in common, but their respective contenders were hardly miles apart in terms of chassis design.

The diversity of machinery in sportscar racing is what attracts me to this branch of our sport. I remember reading about wild Le Mans 24 Hours racers of the past – the likes of the side-engined Ardex Group 6 car, the Rover-BRM gas turbine racer and, going back even further, Briggs Cunningham's Le Monstre – and was lucky enough to be able to report on the tail-end of the rotary-engined Mazda Group C programme. I saw a car run around the Circuit de la Sarthe on liquid petroleum gas and even wrote about an admittedly stillborn project to race a car at Le Mans made of wood – or at least vegetable-fibre composites.

I also got to see a front-engined prototype win races against Audi in the American Le Mans Series in the 21st century. If you'd asked me when I visited my first international sportscar race as a 14-year old in 1981 if I would one day see a prototype with the engine up front triumph in a major event, I would would have giggled in your face. But it happened.

The original open-top Panoz prototype – variously called the LMP1 Roadster-S and the LMP01 Evo – beat the mighty Audi R8 five times in 2000-'02. There were some unusual circumstances along the way, but I would say all but one of them was on merit. And Jan Magnussen's and David Brabham's triumph in Washington – on a decent city track even if it was laid out in a car park – in the last of those years stands as one of the best sportscar races on which I've ever had the good fortune to report.

But there's front-engined and then there's front-engined with front-wheel drive. Wow, that's an entirely different proposition.

If you'd asked me prior to the launch of the GT-R LM in the small hours of Monday morning and a quick chat with Nissan's head of global motorsport, Darren Cox, in the afternoon, I wouldn't have had a clue how it works.

I sort of do now, and here goes trying to explain it.

The LMP1 rulebook is as restrictive as most single-seater formulae in terms of the rear venturis and diffuser. But there is more scope for using the air from the front of the car to one's advantage.

So package the powertrain and its cooling up front, and you free up the sidepods for airflow, which on the Nissan exits out the back above the diffuser.

This has allowed Bowlby and his design team to move the centre of pressure forward and reduce drag, the twin holy grails for the designers of LMP prototypes.

That doesn't explain why Nissan has opted for front-wheel drive. Cox says that the major reason was the weight penalty of a giant propshaft and a differential slung out the back in a formula where achieving the weight limit – now up 10kg from last year's 870 – with a powerful hybrid system is already the big challenge.

It's all starting to make a bit of sense to my untrained mind, but then if it seems obvious to me why hasn't it been obvious to any number of manufacturers and constructors down the years?

Either it's because Nissan has pushed – or rather pulled – itself up a blind technical alley or because other manufacturers didn't have Bowlby working for them and/or have the same spirit of innovation that exists within Nissan. The motor racing industry remains a conservative one, even in a form of racing where new ideas are encouraged and even nurtured.

My enthusiasm for the new Nissan hasn't convinced me that it is going to work out on the race track. On the other hand, I'm not convinced it isn't going to work. I really don't know, and why would I?

But there are so many questions to be answered about this complex beast that breaks the mould. Can it get to the point where it is competitive and can it get there soon enough? Does Nissan have the time and resources to make it work?

And there are more specific questions, such as what's going to happen to the tyres with all that power – 550bhp from the petrol engine and some or maybe all of the retrieved power from the car's hybrid system or systems – being put through the front wheels?

With upwards of 1000bhp, at least for a few seconds on the exit of corners, the GT-R LM will surely be the most powerful front-wheel-drive racing car in history. And we are talking about a form of racing when multiple stints on the tyres are demanded.

Nissan, it should be pointed out, is asking us to be patient.

The hyperbole of former company vice-president Andy Palmer on the launch of the programme last May has disappeared, to be replaced with a more measured tone.

Cox is now talking about "being respectful of the experience and quality of our competition". And Nissan, he says, needs "to be credible and get to the finish of Le Mans" in its first year back in the top flight of international sportscar racing.

Cynics might suggest that the Nissan GT-R LM NISMO is already succeeding and will continue doing each time it visits a new country. It is gaining column inches around the world for its unusual appearance and off-the-wall technology.

That poses an obvious question. Has a brand that got a massive marketing return for its buck with the DeltaWing and ZEOD RC experimental machines at the 24 Hours made its technical decisions based on empirical data and windtunnel figures or has it chosen to be different to grab the headlines?

Nissan insists it's the former. "We are not being different for different's sake," suggests Cox, without prompting. "We were in the fortunate position to have an open mindset and the support of the company to go and do something different."

I'm happy to take him at his word and banish thoughts that the radical concept of the P1 racer is the ultimate get-out-of-jail card, to be played with the words, "yes, but we dared to be different".

That's partly because I really want the Nissan to succeed. As I've already said, it is variety that makes sportscar racing so interesting to me, and I have always loved the weird and wonderful, probably more than the next man.

It would also be good for the WEC if a strange-looking thing is running up front and in contention for podiums and even victories. It could help raise the profile of a series that, although on the up, needs a helping hand in the promotional stakes.

The other reason why I won't doubt Cox is that there does appear to be logic to the concept of this wacky racer.

My problem is that more than 50 years of conventional motor racing wisdom says that Bowlby and Nissan are wrong.