Yahoo Autos This Nissan Sentra Racing Series Needs to Come to America
Of all the hobbies that you can pick up, racing cars lands just shy of owning your own plane as one of the most notoriously expensive ways to have fun. On top of buying your own race car, there are the costs of maintaining it, the other gear that's required, the expense of trailering it from track to track, and all the associated fees of entering races — all of which adds up to make hitting the track in competition a prohibitively expensive endeavor for most enthusiasts. Even with the leveled playing fiend of a spec series, building and maintaining a ragged Mazda Miata or E30 BMW track car can be a headache-inducing, labor-intensive, wallet-draining journey.
But it doesn't have to be this way — at least not in the eyes of the folks running Nissan's Sentra Cup Series. Born from the Canadian Nissan Micra Cup series, the touring car-style series just made an appearance in the United States for the first time. Running at our backyard track of Lime Rock Park, I took a drive up to the Housatonic Valley to peek at what the future of racing here in the U.S. could be.
Born to drum up consumer interest in the Nissan Micra arriving in Canada, the original Micra Cup series drew inspiration straight from the globe-spanning Renault Clio Cup. Running from 2015 through 2020, the Micra driver lineup featured everyone from 24 Hours of Daytona winner Jesse Lazare to Canadian NASCAR drivers to racing novices. Across the spectrum, drivers praised the lack of power — the Micra made just 109 hp — as it created a much more nuanced racing experience. All good things come to an end, however; by the start of this decade, it was becoming too difficult to continue homologating the Micra for the series from an emissions and safety standard, Deshaies explained in an interview with Road & Track.
But Nissan's Canadian motorsports division wasn't willing to give up on racing just yet. In honor of the Micra Series's lightweight, front-wheel-drive origins, the bare-bones Nissan Sentra SV was the easiest choice for a replacement, seeing as how the Canadian market model comes with a manual transmission.
This isn't just a row-your-own Sentra with an FIA-approved roll cage and quick-release steering wheel, either. To buy the full-prepped car — which is originally sold as a Sentra SV to Deshaies and his team before being stripped and swapped — costs around $33,000. Powered by a 2.0-liter inline-four, Nissan quotes 149 hp at 6,400 rpm and 146 lb-ft of torque at 4,400 rpm. (In other words, you'll have to wind it out.) The ECU is a Nissan-requested, Motec-built unit made specifically for the series; it was necessary because unplugging all the driver assistance features kept rendering the cars un-driveable. The Motec units also act as a tell if someone is cheating, seeing as how Nissan technicians have significantly more access to the data than the drivers.
The suspension on the cup cars is completely replaced with a bespoke adjustable coilover racing suspension as well as an adjustable front anti-roll bar and stiffer bushing, but camber and toe are the only major adjustments made by teams. Similarly, the four-piston front-brake calipers and larger rotors come from a 370Z, while the rear drums are replaced with discs from an up-model Sentra.
There are some differences between the racers. Some cars have significantly more camber or less ride height than others, though Deshaies said he wants to limit the slamming of cars with a ride height wand next year. Other series quirks include the weighing of each car after every race, ensuring that each team is keeping below the maximum of 3,045 pounds. And while the series used to use slicks, for 2024, Nissan switched to Pirelli P Zeros to keep running costs down.
With amateur and professional drivers alike sharing the track and contender ages ranging from just out of their teen years to more than 60 years old, the Sentra Cup series is about as egalitarian as racing gets. At 20 years old, Quebec's Marie-Soleil Labelle is the youngest competitor in the series — although, with almost a decade of racing history, she's hardly a novice. Labelle says that driving first in the Micra Cup and now in the Sentra series has been a great opportunity to develop her driving skills and confidence.
"When I switched [from karts to cars] I was kinda young, around 15 years old, and I did not have the experience that the other driver had. The two first seasons were hard," Labelle told Road & Track in a paddock interview. "Switching to the Sentra was a new challenge and I've learned a lot. It's bigger than the Micra and, with the tires and brakes, it brakes better than the Micra."
"Racing is all about planning," said Maxime Labelle, Marie-Soleil's father. "When you’re 15 and you race, you just want to finish."
When she first got out on track, the 15-year-old simply wanted to make it through without crashing herself or anyone else out. But her confidence has grown immensely since; Labelle regularly qualified in the middle of the pack in 2023, ending the season standing 14th out of 30 drivers. This year, Labelle is consistently posting competitive qualifying lap times and battling it out within the driver's scrum, currently sitting in position 16 of 20 drivers. With her sights ultimately set on Canada's NASCAR series, Labelle and her father emphasized that the Nissan Sentra Cup has been a critical and community-building opportunity to get proper wheel-to-wheel time.
On the other end of the spectrum, series leader Valérie Limoges is a seasoned professional, having raced Formula 1600, Formula Renault, and even a track-prepped Ford Mustang GT before spending some time instructing others how to race. After returning to competition with the introduction of the Micra Cup, the Quebec native has become a force to be reckoned with in front-wheel-drive spec series racing, winning the 2022 Sentra Cup series overall and consistently making the podium in the years since. Limoges says that a road-car-based series like this is where she belongs, and where lots of other drivers should learn, too.
"I prefer cars over Formula racing. I'm a little bit better at it than I was at Formula," Limoges said. "[The Sentra Cup] is pretty much for everybody. It's a good learning curve, and it's not super-expensive. There's a lot of veteran driver that drive in it, so it gives you good experience — and a lot of battling on track, because the cars are all the same."
As I sprawl out on the hills above Lime Rock's 1.47-mile track, watching the Sentra Cup race kick off start elicits the same kind of joy as watching a spec-Miata race start. Bunched together, the Sentra's custom exhaust systems buzz tightly, the cars' front ends singing as the tires claw at the lightly banked corners. Halfway through the 45-minute sprint, a divide in the grid forms, with two separate groups warring with each other. The Sentras manage to post a fastest lap time of 1:05.048 — right in line with the average spec-Miata lap time at Lime Rock's long course.
But ultimately, this series isn't about watching race cars; it's about driving them. And for $33,000, I'm sure even the savviest of Facebook Marketplace traders would have a hard time finding a race car as reliable as the Sentra, let alone one that's manufacturer-supported. The accessibility of the Sentra Cup series is unparalleled, and the camaraderie amongst the drivers is something special, too. Sadly, market availability and regulatory hurdles stand in the way of permanently bringing this Canadian-born series to the States — but if that changes, I'd be first in line to secure my spot on the grid.
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