[miatanut]

Originally Posted by Pandamasque

Let me clarify my position once and for all. I don't really hate the vehicle that DW is. I generally dislike bull***, that's why it seems that way. When something becomes good only because it's beaten into your head by some good PR-people, it becomes even worse in my book. I hope I won't see it next year, but it may become the car to have in ALMS 2013.

There is every reason to think that this car is vastly inferior in every respect to a hypothetical rectangular car designed and built by the same people with the same resources, even using some of the same concepts!
Ask yourselves did you REALLY need a wacky-looking vehicle to prove you that the current LMP rules severely restrict efficiency?! This is an extreme example of thinking outside the box for the sake of thinking outside the box. And I have absolutely no problem with any kind of fun quirky nonsense, as long as it's not being 'spinned' as the breakthrough in technology that seems to have already overshadowed everything else that will happen in sportscar racing this year.

PS: @canam
I'd rather see a semi-works Nissan LMP1 effort fighting with the Lolas and HPDs.

It's a demonstration project. If the problem is the LMP rules restricting efficiency (I agree with you on that), its purpose is to get people asking the question "Why do the rules have to be like that?" You can't build a rectangular car to the same concept because the concept is lower cd and lower weight than a rectangular car could achieve while developing the same downforce. It throws nearly all the weight and nearly all the downforce way to the rear of the car. A rectangular car couldn't do that.

Originally Posted by Mt. Lynx

I totally agree with Pandamasque about the DW.

I would like to see some financial numbers surrounding this project. I suspect these numbers are by no means low. How well could a new P2 car have been developed for the same money? Or even a P1?

Don is pretty cheap and Nissan was relatively late to the party, so my impression is they have done this on a shoestring relative to what they have accomplished. I would be interested in the numbers as well.

Originally Posted by the.cosmic.pope

I can't really disagree with what's been said. This is a class for new technology, but the DW doesn't have any new technology, it doesn't even have a new concept. It's proven that lighter weight and less drag means fast lap times and better fuel efficiency. Didn't they work that out some 50 years ago?

So it's taking an old concept and working completely outside the rule book, and is posting laps at the tail end of the LMP2 class? I can't say I'm that impressed, honestly. And now a massive deal is being out of it because Nissan turned up late to the party, slap some stickers on it and say "look how mad we are!". Is it still running an old RML Chevy IL4, or has it gotten a real Nissan unit yet?

I've seen this argument before. If it does nothing new, why were so many people saying it would fall over the first turn, comparing it to Reliant Robin's, etc? If there was nothing new about it, why didn't anybody come up with this in the 1960's or 1970's, before sanctioning bodies got hung up with specifying virtually every detail of the cars? It appears Bowlby's out of the box thinking IS something nobody else came up with before.

Originally Posted by Pandamasque

Marino said good things about the new 'race engine', so I think it's the Nissan lump now.

The only benefit I see in DW is that it may generate talk about lowering minimum weight limits in the regs, as well as the benefits of underbody aero as opposed to the current doctrine of having flat floors.

I wouldn't say it's the only benefit, but I hope it does encourage some productive discussion on why the rules are as restrictive as they are. It would be nice to get back to the days when the beginning of a racing season brought some cars that made you say "Wow!"

There have been some good articles in Racecar Engineering over the years with various designers arguing the spec era hasn't really saved money, as teams pour all their available resources toward finding smaller and smaller increments of time, and at the same time, the current way of thinking generates cars that are all clones, so they can't pass each other, leading to less interesting racing and making racing much less interesting from a technical viewpoint.

The DW is somebody finally doing something about that.

Hopefully it will encourage a change of direction on rules-making that will cause people, years from now, to look at the 1990's to 2000's as the Dark Ages of racing.