Nissan Motorsport has unveiled its four-car Altima race team that will compete in this year’s V8 Supercar Championship.

Team co-owners and drivers Todd and Rick Kelly will continuing campaigning the Jack Daniel’s livery on their Altima, while new team members Michael Caruso and James Moffat will be racing with the yellow Norton 360 livery.

SEE ALSO: Nissan Altima V8 Race Car Makes Video Debut

The Altima mid-sized sedan will represent the Japanese automaker in the Australian V8 Supercar Series and will be competing against Ford, Holden, and Mercedes-Benz AMG for the 2013 championship title. The four Nissan Altimas will make their race debut on March 1-3 at the opening round in Adelaide.

GALLERY: Nissan Altima V8 Supercars

[Source: The Motor Report]

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Just a mere few days after its official unveiling, Nissan has already taken its Altima V8 Supercar out onto the race track for some shakedown runs.

Testing on the Japanese automaker’s newest race car is underway in Melbourne, Australia with the team keeping a close look on the car’s aerodynamics in its first phase of track runs. Team owner and driver Todd Kelly was the first one to get behind the wheel of the race car, which looks and sounds amazing.

The Altima V8 Supercar will make its race debut on the first weekend in March at the V8 Supercar Series race in Adelaide.

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An old nemesis is making a return to Australia’s V8 Supercar series. From 1990 through 1992, the Nissan Skyline GT-R dominated the Australian Touring Car Championship series, running rings around Holden and Ford V8′s. During the 1991 Bathurst 1000, the GT-R even set a top-speed record that could not be matched for nine years. Finally, in 1992, Australia’s racing body charged a weight penalty and a boost pressure reduction in an attempt to level the playing field. However, that failed to slow the GT-R down as it continued to dominate its last season before new rules that required V8 powerplants banned the GT-R’s entry.

After a decade, the Nissan GT-R once again returns to the stage under the the Supercar V8′s Car of the Future program, a new project encouraging a wider variety of automakers to join the series. What’s more, Mark Skaife, the man behind the Car of the Future program, was a former GT-R racer that won many of Nissan’s victories in Australia during the early ’90s.

In order to meet the current V8 Supercar regulations, Nissan’s race car will be forced to use a generic rear-wheel-drive, V8 drivetrain. Despite the fact that it will not be an authentic GT-R racing alongside the fire breathing Aussie V8s, we do look forward to seeing more and more automakers following Nissan’s example to freshen up the Bathurst grid. So far, four GT-R’s under Kelly Racing will be participating in the 2013 season.

Watch video of the announcement below:

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