Delta Wing Discussion ONLY

[TF110]

The bridgestone tires were specifically designed for the DW. They may be oval racing tires though as thats the DW's original intent?

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by TF110

The bridgestone tires were specifically designed for the DW. They may be oval racing tires though as thats the DW's original intent?

The DW wasn't strictly designed for ovals as it was designed as a potential replacement for the aging Dallara IR5 IndyCar.

[miatanut]

Originally Posted by Machin

Clearly "all else" isn't equal since the car is slower through the corners.

Which corners?

Based on how it looks relative to cars behind or in front of it we know it's slower through slow corners where aero doesn't really matter but the hard tires do.

Do we have any evidence it's slower in sweepers, where the aero does matter?

[TF110]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

The DW wasn't strictly designed for ovals as it was designed as a potential replacement for the aging Dallara IR5 IndyCar.

Indy is the goal. A good tire there is all that matters. The road courses are a side show I think its the shape of the car. It went well at the high speed tracks even under the Nissan guise. PLM and LeMans. This year one of its best showings was Road America. But those medium to low speed tracks do no favors to it. They didnt bother to race Baltimore

[Machin]

Originally Posted by miatanut

Which corners?

Do we have any evidence it's slower in sweepers, where the aero does matter?

If you go back to page 163 of this thread you'll see my graph showing highest average speed attained through the sweeping corners of the Porsches Curves at Le Mans in 2012. The LMP1's are averaging over 155mph and the LMP2's were achieving over 150mph. I'd say that is a fairly fast cornering speed.

The Deltawing's highest average was just 137mph. Considerably less than the cars built to restrictive aero rules.

Don't get me wrong; I believe the aero figures published for the Deltawing are most likely correct, so that would suggest the chassis/tyre arrangement must be a massive disadvantage when you consider just how much slower the Deltawing is through those sweeping corners where you'd think it would excel considering it was built without the aerodynamic restrictions of the "normal" cars...

[TF110]

Thats what I think as well. Good at low drag areas, not so good in those turns.

[seanyb505]

Wasn't that what everyone was saying in the beginning? How will it do in the turns?

[bjohnsonsmith]

I'd like to see a comparison of both versions of the DWing.

[miatanut]

Originally Posted by seanyb505

Wasn't that what everyone was saying in the beginning? How will it do in the turns?

They were saying that it would fall over at the first turn. That didn't turn out to be the case.

Maybe the outer rear gets worked over pretty bad and a four square car is evening out the workload better?

On the other hand, from a driver's perspective, given the choice between two cars with dead equal lap times on a given circuit, which would you rather have?

A car that is faster through the turns?

A car that is faster on the straight?

It's an example of why we need rules that allow more design freedom. Different teams would take different approaches.

[TF110]

A combo of speed through turns and the straight is the best.

[miatanut]

Originally Posted by TF110

A combo of speed through turns and the straight is the best.

I would call that the lap time on a given circuit. Assuming the two cars are turning the same lap time but doing it different ways, which would you want?

[deltawing]

you can have great cornering speed and still be blocked behind the slower car in front of you - while in a corner. but if you have great straight line speed, you pass them easily on the next straight. especially in a race with long straights, a well sorted DW would do great. in fact, the real potential of this concept will come out with the zeod, as it looks like a real evolution of the original DW with some interesting solutions and what looks like is a completely different underbody.

[miatanut]

Exactly!

[EricS]

So you mean like DP vs P2?

[deltawing]

Originally Posted by EricS

So you mean like DP vs P2?

But one of them has a 3 cyl. tiny engine!

Yes, I am slowly realizing this is a truly never ending thread because theoretically it is impossible to have 200 people who would agree on 75 different parameters simultaneously, ha!

[optica]

Originally Posted by deltawing

you can have great cornering speed and still be blocked behind the slower car in front of you - while in a corner. but if you have great straight line speed, you pass them easily on the next straight. especially in a race with long straights, a well sorted DW would do great. in fact, the real potential of this concept will come out with the zeod, as it looks like a real evolution of the original DW with some interesting solutions and what looks like is a completely different underbody.

The original DW car was designed primarily to run at Le Mans. It was admitted that getting it to run competitive times at Road Atlanta for last year's Petit Le Mans would be a challenge. Somehow they did achieve a decent performance but it must have been some sort of compromise to do so. Panoz is probably now fighting an uphill battle with a design that isn't basically suited to the twistier circuits so whether the same situation will exist with the Zeod if they try to run it outside of Le Mans will be interesting to see.

[Brownj]

The Panoz DW has really gone backwards in terms of development. Last year at Road Atlanta, the Nissan DW was able to keep pace with the P2 cars and finished 5th overall. This year so far in the dry test sessions, the Panoz DW has been about 3-4 seconds slower than the best lap of last year's car. We'll see how today's practice and qualifying sessions go, as they should get some more good dry running in, but this coupe is not a step forward at all. It will need some massive changes to be competitive in the Prototype class. This doesn't bode well for Panoz being able to sell any to customers.

[Machin]

Petit Le Mans qualifying speed comparison:-



(I've removed the slowest LMP1 because it had its fast lap disallowed due to a penalty; causing a red flag, and was therefore skewing the results).

[deltawing]

Machin, this video just in! Bowlby says the zeod is at 1400 kg "suction under the car at 200 mph", see here around 3:14 min:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=kuN1WH7_sQE

This is actually some fantastic downforce numbers!

[gwyllion]

Those numbers are for the ZEOD, not for the Deltawing Coupe.

[optica]

Having got the roadster running well at Road America it makes you wonder what is obviously wrong with the coupe. Would be interesting to know if they ever put it in a wind tunnel.

[Maelochs]

The diffweence is, Panoz lacks the engineering ability provided by Ben Bowlby.

The DWing is Bowlby's baby and he has no doubt been thinking about it for several years. He has a history of great designs, and that design ability is something money cannot buy (ask every team on the F1 grid what they would trade for Adrian Newey.)

The DWing LM12 probably has a very competent team of operators, it just lacks a genius designer.

For another crew to take over the DWing and try to redesign it would be like me trying to maintain an F1 car. I might be able to keep a ten-year-old Honda on the road, but anything much more than that would simply be beyond me.

The Panoz team can run the DWing, but they went a step further and tried to redesign it, with a new monocoque and bodywork, and while I am sure their designers and engineers are top-flight, they aren't Ben Bowlby.

That said, I really hope they can make the thing work. Foer such a promising concept to flop because of the economics and politics of racing would be a shame.

Of course, it is very possible the ZEOD will be building TUSC-legal version in a couple years. That will be an interesting situation---how will the TUSC board feel about allowing a superior DWing clone to compete with its own version?

[HJJ]

[deltawing]

Originally Posted by gwyllion

Those numbers are for the ZEOD, not for the Deltawing Coupe.

Yes, they are. I should have written it in caps, you are right, this is abbreviation, not a name....

Machin posted the DW numbers, so I thought it would be good to have the ZEOD numbers. It gets quite clear what went on in both camps when you look at the numbers....

[Machin]

Originally Posted by deltawing

Machin, this video just in! Bowlby says the zeod is at 1400 kg "suction under the car at 200 mph", see here around 3:14 min:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=kuN1WH7_sQE

This is actually some fantastic downforce numbers!

Taking the Deltawing's quoted 2.39m^2 Cd.A value equates to 1190kg of downforce at 200mph, or 2100kg per ton at qualifying weight.

The ZEOD will apparently weigh about 700kg, so 1400kg of downforce equates to 2000kg per ton.... i.e. less per ton than the original (open top) Deltawing.

Interestingly the panoz team are claiming that their coupe has about 8% less downforce than the open top version.... so that would be about 1932kg per ton at 200mph.

So the ZEOD will supposedly have slightly more downforce (relative to its weight) than the Panoz Deltawing Coupe, but relatively less then the original Deltwing... All are way higher than the figures being claimed by the LMP2 cars... will be interesting to see how fast the ZEOD takes the Porsche Curves next year..... bearing in mind that in 2012 the LMP2's were much quicker through these corners despite "only" having about 1685kg/ton of downforce at 200mph...