The GT-R team, and its obsession with the Nürburgring, are partly to blame for the industry’ s addiction with Nordschleife times
The RB26DETT just loves to be modified. And it’ s here where the numbers get absurd, especially with modern technology. Anthony Daher, owner of Australian Nissan GT-R specialist, Dahtone Racing, explains.‘ It’ s not like in the Nineties and 2000s, where we had garbage fuel. We had garbage turbochargers. We had garbage ECUs. A 1000hp car was a drag car. Everyone wants over 1000hp now. A 1000hp, that’ s your road car that you go to the shop in, with air conditioning and power steering. All of our cars are like that.’
One of the biggest advances in getting safer, more drivable power from the RB engine is turbo technology.‘ This new stuff, every year there’ s just newer and better and better turbos. Before that, they were all based on truck turbos. Now we have different wheel designs, different blade counts, different blade angles. We’ ve got baby little turbos that, back in the day, would make 500hp. Now we’ ve got turbos that big making 1000hp. We use a lot of Precision Turbos. They seem to be the flavour at the moment, but you can’ t stick with one thing because the technology is advancing so fast.’
The best way now, counterintuitively, is to replace the standard twin-turbo setup with just one.‘ The whole twinturbo thing was meant to be super responsive – come on boost straight away, but still make power. Which it was back in the day, when the GT-R first came out, because the big turbos were garbage. We don’ t do a lot of twin stuff anymore. Only the guys that want that OEM plus, Nismo, JDM look, style and feel to the car, they’ re the guys that want the twin turbo stuff.
Winter 2025 The Engine Rebuilder 25