Nissan Sentra Cup: Is this one of the best deals in motorsport? | Articles

How the Stars Aligned

Nissan Micra Cup. Photo courtesy Nissan Canada.

Since the 1970s, Jacques Deshaies’ life has revolved around motorsport. He’s covered the automotive industry as a journalist and has raced various cars, including in the Canadian Touring Car Championship and the renowned Targa Newfoundland. He even served as president of the famed Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières. He’s had his finger on the pulse of the racing scene in Quebec and beyond.

After the demise of the Honda Michelin series, a standalone tour for Civics, it left a void in Canada, according to Jacques. “I had a lot of guys tell me, ‘Hey, you’re the right guy to start a new, monotype, grassroots series,’” he recalls. “When I saw Nissan launch the Micra … and then they announced the price–$9995–I had to make a phone call to [Nissan Canada Director of Communications] Didier Marsaud. [I said,] ‘Hey, I got a good idea. We have to start a new monotype series with the Micra.’”

Enter luck.

Nissan Sentra Cup promoter, Jacques Deshaies. Photo by J.A. Ackley.

Keep in mind that not everyone at a car manufacturer understands the value motorsport can provide. Didier certainly got it. He rallied in his native France and worked for Renault; the French company’s Renault Clio Cup can be traced back to the ’60s and has welcomed racers around the world. (As an aside, Renault Clio Cup’s rule book inspired the one used by the Nissan Micra Cup.)

“The moment [Jacques] was talking, I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ But on the phone, I could not be too enthusiastic,” remembers Didier. “I had no idea if management would support it.”

The outgoing Didier knows how to build connections and, as a career PR guy, tell a story. He pitched the idea to the then-president of Nissan Canada, Christian Meunier.

A fellow Frenchman, Didier had known Christian for a long time back in Europe. While Christian wasn’t a motorsport enthusiast, he knew business, trusted Didier and recognized the value of the concept. The Nissan Micra Cup would build awareness for a model not seen in Canada for more than two decades and also could help convince people that a car costing less than $10K could be reliable.

After Christian approved it, Nissan’s Global Motorsport Committee in Japan had to sign off on it. Darren Cox, the father of the GT Academy, headed that. Didier knew him when they were both based in Paris and Darren was working in marketing. Darren loved idea and put it on the docket to be discussed at the next session of the committee.

They approved it under the condition that the Nissan Micra Cup car underwent extensive testing in race conditions. Any serious failures in a single-make series would result in negative publicity for the new Micra model, and Nissan wanted to avoid that.

Motorsports in Action prepared a car. Jean-François Dumoulin, the 2007 GT class winner of the Rolex 24 At Daytona, tested it. After countless laps and changes primarily to the suspension, the Micra held up. Nissan in Japan greenlit the project. The Nissan Micra Cup debuted in 2015.

For the 2019 model year, though, Nissan discontinued the Micra and the series faced a new challenge. “Do we stop or do we continue with another car?” Didier recalls asking. “By chance, the end of the Micra was exactly when we were launching this generation of Sentra. The Sentra has been perceived as a cool car but not very fun by this [younger] generation. We had this brand-new design–more sporty, more aggressive. If we transitioned to the Sentra, this could help get the Sentra image [to be] more young, more fun.”

The Sentra had to go through the same approval process as the Micra. After development and testing, the Sentra Cup debuted in 2021. The series ran Micras with Sentras together on track in two separate classes–until this season, when the Sentra was made the sole car.

How Does a Sentra Cup Car Differ From the Street Version?

Side by side of a NIssan Sentra for the street with a Nissan Sentra Cup car for the track, with Valerie Limoges in the middle. Photo courtesy Nissan Canada.

Motorsports in Action, located just outside of Montreal in Saint-Eustache, prepares the cars for Sentra Cup. The race car starts with a standard, Canadian-market, base-model Nissan Sentra S. This means it comes with a five-speed manual transmission, which is unavailable in the U.S.

Motorsports in Action then guts the car, just as anyone would when converting a street car for racing use. Who needs back seats on track, right?

The shop then removes the front brakes and swaps in Nissan Performance four-piston calipers, racing brake pads and larger 355x32mm rotors. (Stock is 279x23mm.)

At the rear, it drops the drums (yes, Canadian base models still get these) and installs Nissan Sentra SV/SR calipers and 259x8mm rotors. Then it adds in some racing-grade, stainless-steel braided brake lines.

The car receives a bespoke coil-over suspension with adjustable ride height yet fixed damping. The front anti-roll bar, along with camber and toe, can be adjusted.

Photo by J.A. Ackley.

A spec exhaust gets installed, too–not so much to enhance the performance of the car but just to make it sound racier. Likewise, the car gets the rear spoiler from the Sentra SR.

Under the hood, the mods include a cold-air intake and some urethane, reinforced motor and gearbox mounts.

The Nissan Sentra Cup replaces the stock ECU with the Motec M1 Series. Part of the reason is to prevent tampering. The other, Jacques explains, is to permit the necessary modifications to the car. Delete an electronic system–like the cruise control, for example–and the stock ECU will no longer start the engine. Motec’s unit simply permits the Sentra to run without the components used for street duty.

Photo by J.A. Ackley.

Inside, the driver faces a racing steering wheel with a quick-release hub. They also get full safety equipment: six-point roll cage, racing seat, six-point harness, window net, fire-suppression system, battery isolator, and front and rear tow hooks. The stock rearview camera runs all the time, serving as a rearview mirror alternative.

The stock wheels are replaced with 18×9-inch flow-formed alloys fitted with 245/40R18 Pirelli P Zero PZ4 tires–a 300tw model. The series used to run racing slicks and rain tires, but moving to a true street model cut costs in half while giving teams a tire suitable for both wet and dry conditions. The series restricts teams to one set of tires per race. Each tire costs $340 Canadian.

Petro-Canada 94 is the only authorized fuel. It runs about $2.50 per liter, with a 40-minute race using about 20 liters–so a total expense of about $50.

Other than those consumables, most teams report that the cars don’t need much of anything else. The engines hold up, with a failure being an extremely rare event. In case you want a backup powerplant, they run about $2000 from the junkyard.

The Sentra Cup uses the same engines as the ones sold for the street-bound Sentras. Photo by J.A. Ackley.

These cars run the exact same 2.0-liter MR20DD that generates 149 horsepower on the showroom floor. “We noticed they drop in compression after time,” notes Sentra racer Matt Miron. “A decent engine in good health will run about 180 psi compression. We notice they drop down to 150. At one point we tried a fresh engine and there was no substantial difference on the straights.”

Likewise, it’s the same manual transmission that comes with the stock Sentra in Canada.

Why Race Sentra Cup?

The series attracts a wide range of drivers, from young up-and-comers to weekend warriors to those with professional racing experience to gray-haired racers just looking for some fun.

Matt Miron. Photo by Olivier Delorme/Nissan Canada.

Matt Miron won his first Sentra Cup event during the series’ inaugural visit to the U.S. at Lime Rock Park this July. The first win is the hardest, right? Well, he scored his second victory at Lime Rock, too, that same weekend.

Matt runs an auto repair shop back in Quebec. He and his brother, Nicolas, consider the Sentra Cup their outlet for speed.

“I’ve been tracking for a very long time, probably 20 years,” Matt says. “I prefer higher-horsepower race cars. It was a series that made sense, financially, to run. It’s a one-make series. All the other cars are the same. Driver skill makes most of the difference, and that’s why we got into this.”

Simon Vincent’s father, Sylvain, is one of a dozen or so drivers to attain Grand Master status in Canadian rally, earning more than 2000 points in his lifetime. Simon was actually born during the 1991 Rallye Baie-des-Chaleurs, located in the wilderness of the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec.

When covid hit, social distancing couldn’t be achieved in a sport with co-drivers, so Simon looked at options for motorsporting alone. He came across the Nissan Sentra Cup. Simon’s father, who used to race in the Honda Michelin series, advised his son that circuit racing, particularly in a low-horsepower-type of car in a single-make series, could help his rallying.

“It’s a momentum car,” says Simon of the Sentra. “You have to have great lines. Don’t brake too much, because you’re going to be slow. When somebody’s getting in front of you in a monotype series, it’s not because they have a better car, it’s because they have better lines, better adjustments. You’re going to have better lines [in rally].”

Nicolas Lévesque jumped into the series with a Micra in 2022 and now drives a Sentra. Before that, he tracked a Camaro. The 24-year-old salesman says he loves racing on the tour.

“It’s a big family,” he says. “Everybody helps others. They have respect for each other. The drivers are good. And good racing.”

When asked about what made the series fun, he quickly pointed under the hood: “The small motor. It is very important not to make a mistake. If you make a mistake, it will be costly.”

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Valerie Limoges. Valerie is an experienced racer, with a start in the Rolex 24 At Daytona to her credit.

She won the Sentra Cup championship in 2022 and currently leads the point standings for 2024. While most teams have crews of family and friends, Valerie drives for the Groupe Gabriel/BetGRW.com Racing Team. Despite her racing resumé, the series satisfies her competitive spirit.

“It’s not always what you prefer, but it’s what you can afford,” Valerie candidly says. “There are always great battles on track and good drivers,” she quickly adds. “I like it. I don’t want to do lapping and be like 5 seconds faster than somebody else. I’ll stay at home and do something else. I want the competition, and the series brings that.”

What’s It Like to Run in the Series?

The Nissan Sentra Cup plays a vital role in the marketing efforts for Nissan Canada. Photo courtesy Nissan Canada.

We discussed costs, but let’s refresh your memory. (Keep in mind that all dollar amounts are Canadian.) It takes $47K to get a brand-new, turnkey car. Weekend costs typically involve a set or two of tires ($1360 to $2720) and 40 liters of gas ($100). Entry fee is $1500 per weekend, with discounts for the whole season.

The schedule has six events, with double features among five tracks in Ontario, Quebec and Connecticut, so account for those travel costs. Other than that, as long as you don’t wreck a car, there’s not much else to do.

However, for those with some business acumen, there’s also the revenue portion of the equation. Nissan Canada offers gift certificates to those who finish up front. Yes, you can save money at the junkyard, but Nissan Canada is giving you money to give back to the dealers and buy components from them. In fact, several dealers either sponsor cars or field them themselves.

And Nissan and its dealers are all in on this concept. Some dealers have requested Nissan Sentra Cup decals to letter up cars at their showrooms. Nissan Canada uses the series in its marketing materials for the Sentra just as Ford would feature NASCAR in its U.S. marketing.

Furthermore, the series streams its races through social media and its races get aired on RDS, the Quebec equivalent of TSN or ESPN. (In fact, ESPN owns 20% of it.)

Add it all up, and teams get another benefit: Many cars in the paddock are covered with sponsors. “The reputation, the marketing, the publicity, this helps drivers get sponsors,” says Steve Montminy, Nicolas’ crewmember and translator at Lime Rock.

How fast are these cars? Glad you asked. Let’s use the ever-popular Spec Miata as a benchmark, as they shared the Lime Rock Park weekend with the Nissan Sentra Cup.

Fastest Spec Miata time? A 1:01.421 lap.

And the quickest Sentra Cup driver? A 1:04.578 lap, so about 3 seconds slower.

Both classes saw tight racing, though, and we saw people impressed by the quality of the on-track action offered by the Nissan series. Then add in the professional-looking field.

“The Nissan Sentra Cup had a successful first-ever U.S event at the iconic Lime Rock Park,” says Didier. “This was a great opportunity to bring a unique Canadian motorsports series to the U.S, and we’re exploring the potential of bringing it back next year.”

Could there be a U.S. equivalent of the Nissan Sentra Cup? Jacques believes there’s demand for it and would love to see it happen. After all, how many single-make series can boast of a brand-new, full-blown race car based on an OEM model for just over $30K U.S.?