Yes, that’s a real race car, and it’s expected to turn an LMP2-prototype-level laptime despite having tires that are just four inches wide and a 300-horsepower, four-cylinder, direct-injection-turbo engine.
The DeltaWing is this years “Garage 56” car, meaning a car that isn’t really a LeMans competitor but which demonstrates important technical ideas. It weighs about half of what a regular prototype does and keeps almost all of that weight on the rear wheels. Aero drag, which is critically important at racetrack speeds, is minimized thanks to the unusual profile and cross-section. It doesn’t look anything like a regular “prototype”, and that’s good to hear since the average modern prototype wouldn’t greatly shock anyone who saw one of Jim Hall’s Chaparrals fifty years ago.
It’s laudable that the LeMans folks are letting the DeltaWing run, but a truly brave organization would relax the rules and let stuff like that race for all the marbles, in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. It’s been pointed out again and again that restrictive rules actually increase the cost of professional racing in high-end series, since new ideas are often cheaper than endless, grinding refinement of old ones.
Whatever. We wish the DeltaWing the best of luck. Meanwhile, SCCA National Champion and Daytona Prototype gadabout Scott Tucker has withstood Jalopnik’s puff pieces and full-press hits to run again at LeMans this year. It just goes to show: racing has room for everyone, from dildo-shaped prototypes to check-cashing nouveaus, as long as you bring cash and plenty of it.
Sounds like they are following part of the Lotus dictum in adding lightness, but are any race cars also simplicated?
I was truly disappointed (but not surprised) that IndyCar didn’t adopt DeltaWing as its new design standard.
Bravo to the ACO for giving this truly radical, potentially revolutionary car a place to demonstrate what it can do.
Best of luck at LeMans and beyond to the DeltaWing team!
While I annually follow and watch the 24 hours of LeMans, the Delta Wing has got my interest up more than any time since the year that the Bentley won Yes, I know it was a rebadged Audi – it was still wonderful to watch Bentley win anyhow.
Now I’m waiting for Triumph to win Daytona again. This year was so close.
In what class would you propose it run “for all the marbles”? For sure it can’t keep up with the big boys, it’ll have its work cut out just keeping up with the LM P2 competitors.
Kind of reminds of the Formula 1 car designed by Tyrrel that had six wheels with 4 small 10 inch tires in the front. He was trying to achieve many of the same goals as the DeltaWing. I wish them luck. Kind of tired of seeing the same basic open wheel design in Indy Car and F1.
it reminded me of the same thing and i agree with you, if we changed the engine rules to allow different formats, invite in more tyre manufactures and allow refuelling in pitstops again, then we would have continued interesting racing. I think this year is the best year for F1 in years, seven different winners in seven races, this has been the exception in recent years where one team dominated and we got boring races. Don’t appreciate indy racing as I’m not a fan of ovals, I like my cars to turn left and right
I don’t understand the tire loads the Delta Wing would experience.
If it’s anything like the tricycles of my youth, the thing ought to keel over or understeer. I’m assuming they’ll be using a harder compound tire in the front to handle the increased brake loads and wear at the same rate as the rears? And just how much would the front tire and rear outside tire contribute during cornering?
Or maybe it’s closer to the Big Wheel (which I never had so I have no idea how they handled). A technical paper would be awesome at this point.
Braking, acceleration, and corning loads are all handled by the rears. The fronts handle very little of the braking duties and only serve as means to change direction.
There was a good article about it in TopGear magazine – I think in the last issue…
Ben Bowlby says that putting the DeltaWing’s center of gravity so far back combined with a narrow track means that the front end has great leverage over the center of gravity, allowing the car to change direction quickly. It’s been a while since I’ve have geometry but it seems to me that moving the steering wheels inboard or outboard would be the equivalent of putting them on shorter or longer levers. A wheel turned to 15 degrees from dead straight mounted far from the center of the vehicle will transcribe a larger circle than a wheel at the same steering angle mounted closer to the center of the car.
there is a good video on Top Gear… weigh distribution is 17.5 F/ 82.5 R …which is why there is no understeer.
From the Top Gear site:
“Get ready, here comes the science. Why, I ask Bowlby, doesn’t it fall over? “It’s all about the centre of gravity,” he explains. The DeltaWing weighs just 475kg, with a bum-heavy 17.5:82.5 weight distribution. “The front of the car we consider to be a single wheel, so all the roll control occurs between the rear tyres, where the weight is. You need the centre of gravity between the wider space, or you’ll end up with something like the Reliant Robin, which is horribly unstable.”
The reason a Robin falls over isn’t because it’s a three-wheeler. It’s because all its mass is over the single wheel rather than between the wider-spaced rears. In the DeltaWing, it’s the other way round.
There’s another benefit to keeping all the important stuff at the back: straight-line stability. “The car has the body stability of a dart, because it has very little drag at the front,” says Bowlby. “The aero drag is behind the C of G, so the vehicle is stable. It sounds odd, but think what happens if you throw a dart backwards? It rights itself.”
Straight-line stability is usually achieved at the expense of agile cornering but not, says Bowlby, with the DeltaWing. The reason? Those 2CV-skinny front tyres. Conventional mid-engined racers have most of their weight behind centre, but their front tyres are generally almost as wide as their rears. This means that under heavy braking or in high-g corners, there’s a surfeit of grip at the front, encouraging the car to swap ends. Because the contact patches of the DeltaWing’s tyres match its front-to-rear weight distribution, it’s balanced in the corners.
“We can only do what we did because we’ve narrowed the front track,” explains Bowlby. Normal RWD racers rely on the grip from one of their front wheels in cornering: the DeltaWing can use both. Initial tests recorded it pulling three lateral g in the corners.
So don’t those anaemic front tyres make the DeltaWing a bit understeery? Not at all. Bowlby describes his car as an ‘oversteer-limit vehicle’: one with a nice big window for lairy powerslides.”
Same weight distribution as my wife!
I’d prefer to see Michael Nesmith’s racing idea: NASCAR drivers racing, while towing a trailer with their personal belongings behind them.
It’s not only the drivers…have you seen the parking lot outside a NASCAR event? WOW
What intrigued me most about this car was the idea of fuel consumption limited racing. The guy behind the idea of DeltaWing proposes a racing series where only limit on what you can do is that you get certain fuel flow that you can’t exceed, instead of today’s restrictors and crazy rules.
Would be quite a lot more useful to the real world…
Forget the flow rate idea. Here’s your X hundred liters of fuel. Make a car that can finish an X hundred km race, in first place, without running out of fuel.
Like F1 of the last century.
Except in F1, they determine how much fuel the cars require to finish a race and allocate that amount. How would F1 look if the cars were give less fuel than they need to go all out the entire distance?
I like this, something different in racing. It does look like it belongs to Ace and Gary but I like it. Hope it does well.
Wrong color.
Yeah, it needs to be flesh-coloured; then it would have comedic value to go along with the interesting concept.
Damn, I guess the Keaton Batmobile was on to something waaaaay back in 1989 – thats what I think every time I see the DeltaWing.
And I really hope it meets or exceeds at LeMans.
the ACO imposed a speed limit (I think 300 km/h) on the Delta Wing to keep its times competitive with LMP2. very interesting concept. ALMS is talking about letting it compete in either LMP1 or LMP2 next year. That Don Panoz is involved with the project helps that out.
I’ve seen no evidence of any such ACO restriction. And ACO is pretty open about its rules.
The reduced refueling time alone should give it a substantial advantage over 24 hours.
Why does this car remind me of the BMW-Oracle? Because it’s the fastest thing out there and everybody hates it. I suspect too many teams are still amortizing their current crop of Lemans protos to get behind starting over with this gizmo. Still, with this tech Lemans would leapfrog Formula 1.