The first ACTUAL pic of the DeltaWing

[SarahFan]

Gee Ken, it's not as if V12 didn't quote EXACTLY what was being compared as similar to NASCAR. 'Twas your swipe at teams merging.

Gary

and as i posted.....it is in fact more similar to champcar than nascar


your milage or rose colored glases may vary

[Mark in Oshawa]

The Delta Wing is the, IMO, latest pied-piper saviour of the Indy Car world..

No...it is just a really radical concept. I don't recall anyone saying it was the only solution other than the people backing the project.

15 months ago, we were hearing the virtues extolled about the DP-01, which was supposed to revolutionize Indy Car racing. Those vcars are about a worthwhile as the car Jim Hurtubise unveled in the qualifying line some years back with a case of beer in the engine compartment..

The DP-01 was not a joke, it was a pretty decent race car, and it only had one year of service. We don't know how it could have evolved. I don't doubt it could have been adapted to run Indy and other ovals just as the Dallara was made to turn right.

There has been the Antares, the Phoenix, The Falcon. Remember what was done to keep competition equal to Andy Granatelli's turbine or Roger Penske's Merc?.

Changing the rules when one one guy builds a better mousetrap is a fine Indy tradition. I am almost shocked that USAC didn't try to ban midengined IndyCars when Brabham showed up with the Cooper in 61. They killed mid engined sprint cars.....

The IRL seems done with the concept of cross-contamination of interests. Tony George killed off his own ill-advised race team. Yiou have independent Indy car-qualified manufacturers like Swift, Dallara and Lola. What is the huge bet, worth millions of dollars, for?

We're going by pictures. No track data. No prototype. No manufacturer.

And would you like to be the first driver to hit the wall with that front end?

Those who prefer this are buying the eggs before they hit the store's parking lot.

First off, an engineer designed the car. One who has designed cars for Lola and others in the past. If he says it is "crashable" I will take his word on it. It is a concept..nothing more, but there are interesting ideas and technologies being advocated that I would love to see proven or disproven in this design before I just write it off as ugly. Heck, the Dallara has been around almost a decade and we still don't accept its look.

[indycool]

Gary, Ken, Mark,

With the long nose, the DW can't be that rigid in the front, even though the drivers' feet will be well behind. I don't know where the chassis' firewall points are but it looks toi me like the car's center of gravity will be well back. On today's tracks, contact with a sideways car could be very nasty.

Lack of testing, particularly crash testing, disturbs me. Those side-by-side shots of a dragster and the DW make me wonder about Turn 11 at Long Beach and if the turn ratio is actually good enough to make it.

I just think a lot more needs to be done before we see the thing in competition.

[garyshell]

Gary, Ken, Mark,

With the long nose, the DW can't be that rigid in the front, even though the drivers' feet will be well behind. I don't know where the chassis' firewall points are but it looks toi me like the car's center of gravity will be well back. On today's tracks, contact with a sideways car could be very nasty.

Lack of testing, particularly crash testing, disturbs me. Those side-by-side shots of a dragster and the DW make me wonder about Turn 11 at Long Beach and if the turn ratio is actually good enough to make it.

I just think a lot more needs to be done before we see the thing in competition.

How do you know how rigid it might or might not be, have you had a chance to see under the skin? Come on IC, give the designer a LITLE credit he knows ful well what the structural requirements are.

Why should lack of testing disturb you? This was and is a design exercise no more no less. The next phase (if it advances to that) would be to build a proototype and begin the testing phase. You are acting as if they plan to go into production immediately? Sheesh, man, did you not ready any of the press releases??? They all said pretty much the last thing your sentence does.

I would fully understand your comments if an announcment was made or even a suggestion was made that the car was ready to go as is. But that has never been suggested even by the folks here who are in "voting" in favor of the car.

Gary

[Mark in Oshawa]

Gary, Ken, Mark,

With the long nose, the DW can't be that rigid in the front, even though the drivers' feet will be well behind. I don't know where the chassis' firewall points are but it looks toi me like the car's center of gravity will be well back. On today's tracks, contact with a sideways car could be very nasty.

Lack of testing, particularly crash testing, disturbs me. Those side-by-side shots of a dragster and the DW make me wonder about Turn 11 at Long Beach and if the turn ratio is actually good enough to make it.

I just think a lot more needs to be done before we see the thing in competition.

IC, I echo most of Gary's points (if not all). This is a concept and the guy who designed the thing is claiming all this good stuff that it can bring to the IRL. He isn't some turkey out of the asylum on a day pass, he was a former chief designer for Lola, who the last time I looked built some rather successful race cars. If he says it will be safe, it likely will be. Carbon fibre is a wonderful substance. I agree it doesn't LOOK like it will work, but if the guy builds this beast and it works, you might be eating enough crow that you would be coughing up feathers.

What we are pointing out is there is a LOT of concepts and ideas on this thing that are pretty good ideas in THEORY. We didn't say we want the car in the field next May in Indy.....

[indycool]

I stand corrected. You guys are looking to the futrure with this thing and I am, too. The sport isn't going to get healthy with it right now, but it may in soime form in the future.

[chuck34]

Actually I have to side with IC a bit on this one. The nose is so far cantilevered out there and so thin that it will be suseptible to breaking at about the middle if a nose first sort of angled impact would happen. Right about where the drivers knees appear to go. Now they could beef up the structure there so that it wouldn't break. But that adds weight, even if it's made out of kevlar/carbon/honeycomb. And weight in a three wheeler (which basically this is) is a bad thing when it's away from the end with two wheels because the farther the CG is from the two wheeled end the more dynamically unstable it is.

Now that being said, I also side with Mark and some others. If this thing is built, and is allowed to run against other designs (sort of like the "good old days"), and beats the snot out of them, then I'm all for it. But I doubt that the current mindset of single make chassis is about to change. So we'll see what happens.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Actually I have to side with IC a bit on this one. The nose is so far cantilevered out there and so thin that it will be suseptible to breaking at about the middle if a nose first sort of angled impact would happen. Right about where the drivers knees appear to go. Now they could beef up the structure there so that it wouldn't break. But that adds weight, even if it's made out of kevlar/carbon/honeycomb. And weight in a three wheeler (which basically this is) is a bad thing when it's away from the end with two wheels because the farther the CG is from the two wheeled end the more dynamically unstable it is.

Now that being said, I also side with Mark and some others. If this thing is built, and is allowed to run against other designs (sort of like the "good old days"), and beats the snot out of them, then I'm all for it. But I doubt that the current mindset of single make chassis is about to change. So we'll see what happens.

I was on the Autoweek website reading about the stillborn USf1 effort, and took a link to their story on the Delta Wing project. The whole idea of this thing is to build one prototype and then let everyone have the data and plans. They want teams to take this concept and do what they want to evolve it.

The other point is you guys keep looking at that long nose and thinking it will break in half but if the driver is set back in far enough, a lot of that nose is crushzone. With carbon fibre, this concept is likely doable. They say they can make it work...I hear your complaints Chuck and IC about that nose, but I am thinking that they must have examined this concept's flaws, detratctors and issues and stand behind it on something more than good will. They have numbers and they have some idea of what is required from an engineering standpoint.

IT may be ugly, but the engineering of this is so far beyond anyone's logic in the evolution of the race car that if this thing hits the track and does HALF of what they claim, then it is a step up.

[SarahFan]

The whole idea of this thing is to build one prototype and then let everyone have the data and plans. They want teams to take this concept and do what they want to evolve it.
.

this is where i get hung up on the entire project related to cost...

one actual builders get hold of the basic 'conceptual plans'.....and reengineer it ... tweak it test modify it update it build and deliver it I dont believe the projected 1/4 to 1/2 cost for a second.......

[chuck34]

I was on the Autoweek website reading about the stillborn USf1 effort, and took a link to their story on the Delta Wing project. The whole idea of this thing is to build one prototype and then let everyone have the data and plans. They want teams to take this concept and do what they want to evolve it.

That might work. I like the idea of having a tub type structure that others can modify. Not sure if that is exactly what they have in mind, but could be. :-/

The other point is you guys keep looking at that long nose and thinking it will break in half but if the driver is set back in far enough, a lot of that nose is crushzone. With carbon fibre, this concept is likely doable. They say they can make it work...I hear your complaints Chuck and IC about that nose, but I am thinking that they must have examined this concept's flaws, detratctors and issues and stand behind it on something more than good will. They have numbers and they have some idea of what is required from an engineering standpoint.

Yes, that long nose is a big crush zone, in a head on impact. How often does that happen? More often than not, there is an angle between the car and the wall. That creates a moment arm somewhere in the chassis. This has a tendency to shear the tub basically in the middle. Think Stan Fox at Indy in '95.

As for your faith in these guys' engineering abilities ... While I agree they have done some good cars in the past, but this is slightly different. Everything I've read suggests that they have focused mostly on the aero bits of the car. Lots of CFD, and wind tunnel time. That along with the relatively short time they've been doing this, I wonder how much time they've really spent on crash testing/modeling. If I've missed that in one of the many press releases please point me to it. But until I see some crash tests, or FEA models, I have my doubts. After all, like you keep saying, this is a model, not even a prototype yet. So I'm skeptical at this point, sorry.

IT may be ugly, but the engineering of this is so far beyond anyone's logic in the evolution of the race car that if this thing hits the track and does HALF of what they claim, then it is a step up.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Not sure who said that, but it seems to fit in this case. And some of us do have, at least, a basic understanding of engineering, specifically race car dynamics, so I'm not sure it's "beyond anyone's logic".