Kelly Brothers Racing turn to NISMO gurus to improve Nissan's performance Todd Kelly and his Nissan Altima during the debut V8 Supercars season. TODD Kelly stood beside a bank of computers in the NISMO bunker in Fuji, Japan. "Do you want to see the car?" he said, surrounded by an army of small men wearing white coats. One of the NISMO guru's nodded. Todd brought up a picture of his Jack Daniel's Commodore, the V8 Supercar he had spent four years building, tuning and refining. The Japanese technician smiled. "Easy," he laughed. He pointed to the front spoiler. "Make bigger," he barked. Then to the body of the car. "Make smaller," he continued. And then to the rear wing. "Make better," he said. He looked at Todd. Go much faster. If only it was going to be that easy ... Last year Kelly Brother's Racing (KBR) made the bold decision to throw out a car that had been developed to the point of perfection and build a vehicle based on a road car that would not exist for another six months. People called them crazy and told them they would fail. Sunday's action at the Gold Coast 600 at Surfers Paradise - v8 Supercar Qualifying - Jack Daniels Racing's Todd Kelly Source: News Limited But as Todd sat with the confused Japanese man, the one now saying; "Why anyone want to race car like that?" Kelly knew his team had made the right choice. KBR would no longer be one of several Holden teams relying on handout from a factory in Melbourne. They now had a Japanese bunker, overflowing with engineers, designers, and builders. They now had NISMO - the people that make Nissan's go really, really fast - on speed dial. And Todd knew the man now shouting in Japanese at the picture of the "heavy," "blunt" and "make no sense" Commodore on the computer screen, would not rest until he made his new car NISMO fast. Kelly new his Nissan Altima would see "Godzilla" rise once more. The international mission to see Nissan conquer V8 Supercars continued this week with KBR freighting an engine to Japan to be tested following a landmark engine deal with NISMO. "We did a deal recently for NISMO to help with some of our engine development," Todd said. We've done everything in-house at Nissan Motorsport up until this point. We had a visit from the NISMO head engine engineer at the Grand Prix, and that resulted in them sending some test parts over from their version of that engine that competes in sports car racing, but unfortunately, that did not result in any improvement over here. NISMO has been extremely keen to work closely with us and help move us forward, so they sort approval to get one of our units over there and begin their own work on it. Nissan have spent more than $5 million dollars this year to take on Holden, Ford and Mercedes in the fast growing Australian racing series. No one expected miracles in the first year, but make no mistake, the Japanese giant is here to win. The Kelly's have been challenged endlessly by the new machine with horsepower and straight line speed caging the latest incarnation of Godzilla. The team has found gains in the engine and now Japan will find more. V8 Supercar drivers Rick and Todd Kelly before the switched from Holden to Nissan. "Essentially, it's a fresh outlook and a fresh set of eyes, so sending our engine to NISMO will be verification of where we're at and how well far we've come with it this year," Todd said. The equipment that they've got at their fingertips to develop the engine is a lot higher-tech than what we have. They will be able to see things a little bit clearer than what we can. The engine will be placed on one of the world's most sophisticated dyno machines and tested by the man who put the "Fast" into "Fast and Furious." "It's a much more controlled environment over there," Kelly said. Nismo's dyno cells are all extremely controlled temperature wise, and their repeatability of what they have is excellent. They have invested an incredible amount of money in the most up-to-date technology. Having this resource available to us is invaluable. They even have a transient dyno that they can run full lap simulation. That's not going to be used on our engine this time, but it could be a great option for us to use in the future. Nissan have already gone from pretenders to contenders with a giant killing race win at Queensland Raceway proving their might. And the Kelly's have done a remarkable job going from zero to flat out in under 12 months. "The gains have been good," Todd said. and I'm extremely proud of the work and progress that our team has made, considering this is exactly the same block and cylinder head that you'll find in your new Nissan Patrol. We've taken it to the max. To get to where we are, we've probably machined too much material out of the cylinder head to the point where we are really testing the reliability of the unit, but I'm really happy with the progress. I often think about the amount of time and money we've spent per extra horsepower. It would be a scary figure. But it is only the start of a journey that should have Ford and Holden running scared. The powerful company are demanding results and expect to see Godzilla break free from his chains next year thanks to some help from Japan. "Straight-line speed has been the only thing that has slowed us down, and there's two things that have contributed to that - engine and aerodynamics," Todd said. Thanks to our own work at Nissan Motorsport, we feel that the engine has become an small component of our shortfalls, so the majority of our gains will come from aero which we're working through at the moment. Improvements with the engine will certainly help, so when we have both of those sorted for 2014, we'll be on the money.