SYDNEY – Feb 6 AAP – Nissan has fired the first shots of the 2015 V8 Supercars Championship season, with Todd Kelly posting the day’s fastest time at the test day at Sydney Motorsport Park.

It was the first time on track for the 25 cars in 2015, and teams used their time to find solid, consistent pace across the day’s sessions, before a quick-fire 10-minute period late in the final session where times tumbled.

Kelly piloted his Nissan Motorsport Altima to a 1:29.5352, eight-thousandths of a second faster than second-placed man, HRT driver James Courtney.

Two-time Bathurst winner Kelly played down the speed of his Nissan, saying that he believes he was on better quality tyres than many of his rivals.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Kelly said.

“There is quite a lot of time left in the car, and I’m not sure whether many people ran quality tyres, so I don’t want to read too much into where we ended up.”

Kelly’s pace capped a quality day for all four of Nissan Motorsport’s entries, with younger brother Rick topping the first two sessions.

The two other Nissans of Michael Caruso and James Moffat also finished the day inside the top ten, giving an indication that the Japanese make may well be a player in 2015.

“The guys have been very, very busy, refining our package to the point where we are competitive,” Rick Kelly said.

“We don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves though, I think we were up the front at the test day last year as well.”

Todd Kelly’s result comes after a tough 2014, where he questioned his place in the sport after finishing 22nd in the Championship standings.

Kelly is both a driver, and boss of his team, Nissan Motorsport.

Ford’s new Falcon FG X V8 Supercar hit the track in the hands of Mark Winterbottom, Chaz Mostert and Marcos Ambrose, with Winterbottom proving fastest in Ford’s latest machine.