Racing this year at Le Mans 24hr as an experimental a whole new concept in race car



Its one seriously "out there" design, but very impressive when you see it go, with extreme light weight and only running a 1.6L 4 pot it's designed to keep close to pace with the faster cars but use less fuel and tyres reducing time in the pits



www.highcroftracing.com/deltawing/
deltawingracing.com/

Gwendy said...

Always open to new ideas, That looks like a nightmare of oversteer to me.

That, or tipping over in a hard corner...

Think about it: braking and cornering hard puts all the weight of the car on the outside front wheel. Which simply isn't there in this car!

If they had it wider at the front and narrower at the back I'd say it was a great design... but... well... hmm.

nebbian said...

Gwendy said...

Always open to new ideas, That looks like a nightmare of oversteer to me.

That, or tipping over in a hard corner...

Think about it: braking and cornering hard puts all the weight of the car on the outside front wheel. Which simply isn't there in this car!

If they had it wider at the front and narrower at the back I'd say it was a great design... but... well... hmm.

braking and cornering don't happen at the same time but still it is just not possible for this car to achieve the cornering speeds of the other cars it has potential to be faster in a straight line though being a bit more aero dynamic

As some of the write ups have said you automatically think of the set up like a Robin reliant, this has most of the weight over the front wheel making it extremely unstable.

This wee beastie has most of its weight over the rear axle

Nail - Head DrJ

I love innovation, and the creativity which happens when they throw the race design rule book out.

At the end of the day it may be a POS but it's definitely interesting and may send others down some previously unexplored thought paths. Time will tell.

I thought it would be interesting them explaining to the race committee that the "Gap " was big enough to fit the nose in just forgot about the trainer wheels behind.

^^^^

Now we're talking!!!

nebbian said...

^^^^

Now we're talking!!!

Well then you're up for the Gopro version. This bloke makes a living by having the worlds best garage full of odd cars.

^^^^There's no oversteer there.

This glorious sounding prototype is a genuine oversteer monster.

(from their site)

Vehicle weight distribution is necessarily more rearward than traditionally seen with 72.5% of the mass between the wide track larger rear tires.

76% of the aerodynamic downforce acts on the rear of the car which has a lift to drag ratio of >5.0.

Rear wheel drive coupled with the rearward weight and aerodynamic distributions greatly enhances inline acceleration capability.

Unique amongst today's racing cars, more than 50% of the vehicle's braking force is generated behind the center of gravity giving a dynamically stable response.

Locking propensity of the un-laden front wheel at corner entry is greatly reduced due to virtually no lateral load transfer with the narrow front track/wide rear track layout, steered wheel "scrub drag" moment is virtually zero greatly increasing tire utilization and reducing mid turn understeer.

______________

It sounds more like a two wheel car, the front wheel just for minimum stability.

It's been done before, just not as extreme:

You can only go so far with a light front end. You need two forces to get a car to corner. The lateral centrifugal force - dominates in the big sweeper - and could be done with the rear wheels if the C of G was also to the rear.

And some forces to get the car rotating in time with corner. That's the coupling to overcome the rotational inertia. This is most important to initiate a turn on tight corners and it's done by the front wheels. Some cars don't have enough traction available at the front and suffer what's called "initial understeer".

Gotta love a 24hr race

Qual 28th

Gearbox issues early on spending some time in the pits
Back out on track working way back up the field when they got slammed by a Toyota
1.08

it's broken


yes, it was slower than the LMP1's and some of the LMP2's but they were getting 11 laps out of a 40L tank with very low tire wear, whilst the other cars were getting around 8 laps with 50% more fuel

Shame, but that's motor racing