Most liked posts in thread: DeltaWing in 2012 LeMans

We are going to see some interesting stuff over the next few years with the announcement of the 2014 rules.

Lots of freedom to design with the limits being the amount of fuel that can be used over the duration.

 

What is it about these LMP1 drivers.........? Don't they realize it's a freakin' 24 hour race. Last year McNish almost kills himself and another driver with a boneheaded move and this year many more moves of the same caliber....sheesh.

 

And just to show there's nothing new, here is a somewhat similar idea from the 1950s with either a twin-supercharged 1720cc Maserati engine or a 500cc unsupercharged Gilera motorcycle engine which achieved 200 km/hr =124mph:



Piero Taruffi's TARF - even uses a front-wheel cradle just like the DeltaWing, in the case of the TARF to quickly turn the car round at the end of a record run. It is described as a Bisiluro (twin torpedo) and a different car of the same name actually ran at Le Mans.

 

Although I found the car interesting enough with some new bits of techno, I've said all along that if you let Audi, Toyota or anyone else enter a car that weighed half as much as mandated for the other cars, it would run as fast without having to look like a dart - it's the weight that makes this car work, not the nose.

That said, it did ramp up interest in the race and I appreciated that!

I agree that 2014 is the year to watch, with the announcement of the fuel cell car running and the freedom of design.....that should be a fantastic race!

And congrats to Audi for making it interesting - at least within the team! :biggrin5:

Well done to Toyota too, for getting their program so far in such short time, and with the challenges the last 2 years have brought.

 

Did the Toyota driver get penalized? It's the responsability of the PASSING vehicle to do so safely. The Deltawing was off-line when the Toyota tried to make a move.

 

The Toyota camp sent him to the showers and did not allow anyone to interview him . The car was retired shortly afterwords so any penalty would have been more or less fruitless. At Le Mans there is quite a bit of this sort of thing, takes outs and such , but I don't know if they really penalize much . With " gentleman " drivers it is more or less expected but not from a " pro " such as takajima was supposed to be .

Randy

 

Fan Favorite was not my term , I coined it from one of the broad casters . It certainly ramped up interest for this years event based on the amount of advanced promos etc. As for the race being over , it was as far as the Mfg race in Lmp1 which is still the overall winner and premier class . When Takajima screwed up his car and the Delta wing in one bold move, 6 hours into the event they could already type up the headline , " AUDI wins again " They just had to wait 18 hrs to make it official

Randy

 

Nakajima and some of the senior Toyota team members came to the Nissan Delta garage the next morning and apologized personally for knocking them out of the race.

Classy thing to do.....

Would have been better if he hadn't taken them both out, but........

 

Agreed very classy and that had to be a long walk to the Delta pit for those guys The silver lining if any was that the results they did get were very encouraging and earned a " A " from some of the journalists / corespondents . Will be interesting to see what the next step is .

Randy

 

Both of those videos were frustrating and saddening to watch.

Reducing frontal area and weight on cars in the name of efficiency w/o compromising stability during cornering has been a long time design challenge.

I agree with the later comments in this thread that it will be interesting to see what's next for the DeltaWing. Would really like to see what this ultra- efficient race car is capable-of in the future.