Delta Wing spent alot of time & money pitching this thing as the next generation Indycar, when it failed to get the bid, they had to try and recoup some of that money somewhere, and suddenly its a sportscar.
I'm kind of arguing for the sake of it now - but - that's good business sense. I would bet you good money that this was always in the offing as an alternative to the indycar bid - clues being that the DeltaWing is an Aston Martin AMR ONE chassis (which they couldn't have made any worse) - As a business owner, I do things like this all the time - having more than one use for an investment is essential in these times of austerity!
They may have thought it would work around a high speed oval, or even on a road course since Indycar is a spec formula, and it wouldn't be racing against anything else. But the creators of this thing know damn well it will get slaughtered by conventional prototypes (and GT cars).
Yep - just like rear engined F1 cars previously mentioned would never work, just like downforce was a waste of time, just like concorde would break up at supersonic speeds, just like at the strike of midnight in the year 2000 everything in the world stopped working, and just like the world is going to end on 21st December.....
If Marino Franchitti (who does have an agenda, and whose comments should probably be taken with a pinch of salt) is to be believed, the car handles quite well - and in particular is stable over bumps - maybe the concept isn't so flawed after all.
The idea of it running a 24 Hour race on ten fewer pitstops is great, if it runs without any problems at all.
What makes you think they can't do that? The engine is a 1.6 litre turbo - producing 300bhp. You can buy cars (outside of the US) that use this format, that will run faultlessly for 150,000 miles....that Engine is not overly stressed - they might have electrical gremlins, they might have transmission problems - but they have the backup of a manufacturer who do tend to make pretty reliable drivechains (source: Number of Nissan Sunny's driving around in the local chav estate).
Hasn't it occured to anyone that if this idea was going to be successful, someone would have tried it by now? There have been a helluva alot of brilliant designers of racing cars over the years, one would think that at some point one of them would have thought about building something like this, to come to the conclusion it just will not work.
Well - have you ever seen anyone try anything like this? Can you provide evidence that anyone has worked this concept before? I doubt it. The thing is - nobody really knows if this is going to work in its current format - the fact that Nissan have got behind it, indicates that there might be something unexplored in the world of racing - big shock - this is called progress. There have been many brilliant designers over the years - but most of them had constraints - either regulatory, or financial, or simply constraints of the mind.
This might be a clever engineering concept, but its not a fricking racing car. The idea of building a racing car being that your going to build something that will go faster than the opposition. This clearly won't
Fax
No - The idea of building a race car in this context, is to complete more laps than the opposition in a set time period. That is the fundamental difference between a sprint series and an endurance series - what Deltawing has done, is throw out the conventional rule book of speed first, economy second, and think laterally about the problem - coming up with a different solution which they are now testing - Surely this should be applauded rather than written off?
Don't get me wrong - the car is dull - it looks intruiging, but it's quiet, doesn't look all that exciting when it's circulating, and doesn't get my blood pumping - but it IS potentially progress - which COULD lead to the next generation being a little more exciting! Come June, we'll know if it has potential. Come next June, we could potentially be seeing more manufacturers taking parts of the DeltaWing into their designs.
And anyway Fax...I'm still P***ed that I didn't get to meet you at Sebring and debate this, and recent F1 history with you, over 2 litres of Jagermeister...I bought a bottle and put it in the freezer especially!.... Hope things have sorted themselves out with the pet (hopefully for the better)
BZ
