The DeltaWing lives

[Lousada]

I was a doubter until last Friday when I saw it in person on the track and got a look at it close up. It works and it will work.

Now the naysayers will say "I told you so" if it doesn't win.

Of course it performs up to the standards... if those standards are set by themselves. Build this concept to LMP2 regulations and see what happens. Or allow proper square platforms build to Delta Wing regulations. My guess is: on an equal playing field the square platform always wins.

[FIAT1]

Gordon Kirby - Auto Racing - The Way It Is .

[garyshell]

Gordon Kirby - Auto Racing - The Way It Is .

Great article!

Gary

[DanicaFan]

Have you seen it make a hair-pin turn ? I havent and I havent heard anyone say they have either. I would love to see this monstrosity make the sharp hair pin at Long Beach. It would look ridiculously stupid doing it and extremely slow at making it.....lol

[garyshell]

Have you seen it make a hair-pin turn ? I havent and I havent heard anyone say they have either. I would love to see this monstrosity make the sharp hair pin at Long Beach. It would look ridiculously stupid doing it and extremely slow at making it.....lol

And you would know this, how? If your engineering prowess is anything like your race prediction prowess, you might want to rethink this assertion.

Gary

[Andrewmcm]

Have you seen it make a hair-pin turn ? I havent and I havent heard anyone say they have either. I would love to see this monstrosity make the sharp hair pin at Long Beach. It would look ridiculously stupid doing it and extremely slow at making it.....lol

So by the same token, how can you comment on how this car will perform when you have not see it perform? How can you be so sure it wouldn't make a tight corner? Perhaps you would care to comment on your Engineering experience, and then we can decide whether or not your comments bear any weight at all.

I'm looking forward to seeing this car in action. I have no current opinion either way on whether this car will work on all types of circuit. For information I hold a Masters Degree in Physics with Astrophysics, and a PhD in Computational Fluid Dynamics. I've also done a little bit of automotive CFD in my time.

Whether it works or not, this car will leave a lot of people looking stupid on either side of the fence.

[DanicaFan]

Im not an engineer but with a long nose on a car like that, commen sense kicks in that it could not make a sharp turn. Its not physically possible. It would have to go wide.

[Andrewmcm]

To quote Gordon Kirby in that article - "Imagine yourself fifty or sixty years ago as a fan of the beautiful Indy roadsters of the late 50s and early 60s or the classic Maserati 250F, Mercedes-Benz W196 or Dino Ferrari Formula One cars from the mid-fifties. If I suggested to you that those superb cars were about to be replaced by an invasion of tiddly little rear-engine Coopers and Lotuses you would have said I was crazy. But it happened, almost overnight, between 1958-'61 in F1 and 1963-'66 in Indy cars. "

Common sense means nothing in Engineering. The Indy boys in the early 60s would have looked at rear-engined cars and laughed their heads off. They were soon laughing on the other side of their faces when they got blown away by rear-engined cars. Go back in time to the 1910s and show someone an A380 and they would think you were mental if you suggested that thing could fly. We only perceive the Delta Wing car to be ridiculous because it is a radical concept. It may work, it may not work. If it does work you can be sure that it will be adopted pretty sharpish by manufacturers as a lot of its technology seems to be relevant to what really matters - cars that will be on the road in future.

[anthonyvop]

Anthony,

I have been searching for any video from the Sebring rollout. Do you know if there is any posted on the web?

Gary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QwpOpfHycU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alt6HfokxEg

[anthonyvop]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wlQAvEfmeI