SUPERCARS champion Rick Kelly was threatened with being blocked from partaking in the 2015 season at the height of tensions between the V8 category and the Bathurst 12 Hour.

That’s the revelation shared by former Nissan Australia CEO Richard Emery, a decade on from Supercars infamously opting to schedule a pre-season SuperTest at Sydney Motorsport Park on the same weekend as the 12 Hour.

Nissan Australia at the time was striving to strengthen its ties to the marque’s global motorsport arm Nismo after a somewhat shaky start to life in Supercars with the Altima.

But Supercars itself was in no mood to budge on its turf war with the 12 Hour, its ploy effectively depriving the international GT3 event of any Aussie V8 stars.

“The plan was to have (Katsumasa) Chiyo, Rick (Kelly) and Alex Buncombe drive the car,” Emery told the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Autobarn.

“And then Supercars put the test on the same weekend. So I went to see James Warburton and Shane Howard, who are now actually both back in charge, and it’s probably the most angry I have ever been in a meeting.

“We looked at how we’re going to do this; so we said, we’ll have a helicopter get Rick back and forth. And every time we said ‘what if we did’ they just said ‘no’. They weren’t going to listen at all.

“They were doing what they felt was right for their organisation and obviously we were doing the same thing, I was doing the right thing by Nissan and Nismo.

“They probably didn’t understand, or maybe I didn’t explain the context of ‘I need Nismo onboard…’ but anyway they became intransient.

“Every time we came up with a different solution, they said ‘no’. I spoke to helicopter companies about how quick we could Rick between Bathurst and Sydney Motorsport Park and it just became intransient.”

Nissan Australia smuggled an Altima into the Bathurst 12 Hour at the height of Supercars’ war with the event. Pic: an1images.com / Dirk Klynsmith

Which led to the sensational threat to bench the 2006 Supercars champion if he chose the 12 Hour over the SuperTest.

“What I said is ‘if we don’t run Rick (at the test) and we run somebody else?’ and they said ‘well he can’t race in the championship’,” Emery noted.

Nissan went on to win the 12 Hour without Kelly as Chiyo, Wolfgang Reip and Florian Strauss co-piloted a GT-R to a stunning triumph.

Kelly meanwhile delivered four podiums and a top 10 end-of-season ranking in the 2015 Supercars Championship.

Supercars later that year acquired the 12 Hour, a relationship which continues to this day.

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