Delta Wing Discussion ONLY

[miatanut]

Originally Posted by AGD

There may be some interest when someone is doing something unusual, but when the end result is that everyone may have to do that exact same unusual thing by rule once it meets some minimum standard, well, nothing unusual can ever happen again really. The nature of P1 may be evolutionary rather than revolutionary (though I would disagree with that), but at least it evolves. If Panoz has his way, P1 may be nothing more than what Indycar is today. Oh, and Indycar is pathetic and I don't watch that crap either. I have no tolerance for greedy series, aimless administrators, and spec cars. It's not just a Wang thang.

You're going on about how you don't want to see it turn into a spec series, and I haven't seen anywhere but your quotes that that's even on the table, and then you complain that this thing shouldn't be allowed to run because it doesn't fit within the ACO's narrowly drawn rules. There seems to be some magic sweet spot in the middle that fits within your comfort zone, but as someone who was blessed to enjoy the late '60's, the '70's and early '80's and saddened to see the increasing restrictions on the cars in the late '80's to the present, to me this is a real breath of fresh air. We need safety standards, but it would be possible to have just safety standards, an energy limit, rules aimed at keeping costs reasonably under control, and teams could go off and do what they want. The result would be the sort of blossoming of variety we saw back in those days. Auto racing could go back to being a place where automotive technology gets invented and advanced.

Really, it's quite the opposite of spec racing.

[AGD]

Originally Posted by miatanut

You're going on about how you don't want to see it turn into a spec series, and I haven't seen anywhere but your quotes that that's even on the table, and then you complain that this thing shouldn't be allowed to run because it doesn't fit within the ACO's narrowly drawn rules.

The ALMS brass has said they want this thing fully engaged in the ALMS, but we all know they aren't going to open the rules up. Panoz runs a racing car manufacturing concern and a materials business that he is looking to promote. The talk about the car being "open source" or whatever during the IRL stage has gone away. The ALMS needs more field fillers. It's quite clear to people in the know (people way waaay more connected to me) that this is a spec car operation. Panoz wants to make money off this thing and he isn't going to make money running an exhibition here and there. He needs to sell cars. The Abruzzi was an utter failure and it seems that this is his rebound idea. Well, the Wang and the URC, but the URC is looking like a complete failure too.

Like I said, there is nothing officially saying that this is going to be a spec car. Of course, Atherton pretends to act like there aren't spec cars in the ALMS now so of course they would not say that even if it is complete nonsense. People who are "inside" the ALMS circle seem quite convinced of what is going on. Combine that with what we've all seen from the ALMS in recent years and I think the answer is quite clear.

[FordCosworthPanoz]

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

In other forums, people who viewed that youTube video said that they heard a chirping or squealing as if the car was pushing as it turned.

I heard it, too..and the car looks like it is only going about 40 mph

Yet no mention of it here...

Just thought i'd bring it to the table...

What are these facts and sources you are rambling on about?! Crazy talk!

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by FordCosworthPanoz

What are these facts and sources you are rambling on about?! Crazy talk!

It is really more of a sliding or skidding sound in that YouTube clip and not a squeal.

Listen when you watch it and find out if you can hear it, too.

[FordCosworthPanoz]

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

It is really more of a sliding or skidding sound in that YouTube clip and not a squeal.

Listen when you watch it and find out if you can hear it, too.

Just joking of course...

Just saw the video, judging by how giggity Delta Wang fanboys are all over the internet, you would have thought the video would have the "car" doing more than 40 mph, without skidding the wheels in the corner at such low speed.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

It is really more of a sliding or skidding sound in that YouTube clip and not a squeal.

Listen when you watch it and find out if you can hear it, too.

There's definitely a skidding type sound coming from the D-Wing as it enters the corner.

[miatanut]

Originally Posted by FordCosworthPanoz

Just joking of course...

Just saw the video, judging by how giggity Delta Wang fanboys are all over the internet, you would have thought the video would have the "car" doing more than 40 mph, without skidding the wheels in the corner at such low speed.

So now there is a whopping 17 second video of the car making one turn and all the internet racing car design experts who said it would never turn are getting all giggity about it making a little tire noise going into the turn they said it would never be able to make.

The original concept called for a very flexible front which would transfer virtually no torsion and the very limited information we have so far suggests the front is a bit more torsionally rigid (due to using an already available tub which was designed to be torsionally rigid) so maybe the front, which was supposed to have next to no weight transfer, has some weight transfer and it's dragging the inside front wheel.

The driver is driving something very different from anything they've driven before, and he has a bit of learning to do in how to drive it. The design simulations are likely to be a bit different from reality, so the setup they threw on it for the first time out is likely a bit different from what's optimum. Even Boeing gets fooled sometimes the first time they put a model in the wind tunnel relative to what their CFD said things were going to be. This is a much bigger jump from the norm than what Boeing is dealing with.

No doubt they have a lot more work to do before it can be competitive, but it didn't fall over at the first turn, which is better than some predicted.

[Adam43]

As long as someone is wrong that is all that matters

[davehenrie]

Originally Posted by kurski

I think DeltaWing car is really ugly and it should not be allowed to participate in the races.

Agreed. Then we must throw all the current F1 cars in the dumpster as well. Hideous does not begin to describe those duck-billed diving boards. Any car with it's snoot up in the air should be banned immediately...cuz they are ugly. If man was meant to race with his feet up in the air, then we'd all have F1 cars with Lazy Boy recliners in the cockpits. And those fins & holes make all the current Protos ugly. Off with their heads as well. Ugly drivers should go next. Ugly owners too. Yes ugly has no place in racing.

dh

[MitchZ06]

I think it's ugly too but I'm not against it for that. Mainly that it's designed to replace a single seater and they're usually open wheelers and they have no place in sportscar racing, not to mention everything bar the shape is a lie (they could do all they want to do with a normal prototype....).

[ptclaus98]

Originally Posted by MitchZ06

I think it's ugly too but I'm not against it for that. Mainly that it's designed to replace a single seater and they're usually open wheelers and they have no place in sportscar racing, not to mention everything bar the shape is a lie (they could do all they want to do with a normal prototype....).

1) It's a sportscar tub, with two seats. One actually probably big enough to seat my fat ass in.

2) It looks miles better as a sportscar, much more refined.

[Matt]

I think people calling it the "wang" are pretty immature.

[HJJ]

BWTM. *

Sometime around 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 1, the twin-cowled, triangulated DeltaWing race car took its first lap around a race track. The car that could either revolutionize open-wheel racing across the globe or become an historical oddity akin to the six-wheeled Tyrrell Formula One car drove onto the Cal Club's track at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in California, at about half speed for its first shakedown runs.

And? The car some thought would flop over on its side because of its seemingly unstable needle nose, actually took corners at what appeared to be normal speeds.

“They weren't going fast, but they went around the track a few times,” said one race fan who watched the test.

The car was back out after lunch, and this time opened up a little more, hitting what sounded like a rev limiter on the engine--the supplier of which remains unknown--before it went back into the garage for the day.

The main thing is it worked, turning corners with remarkable stability. So far, so good.

Two days before the test, Autoweek visited All American Racers, Dan Gurney's engineering and speed emporium in Santa Ana, Calif., where the car was built. We got some background on the project, or as much as the team could reveal before a couple of sponsorship deals go through and all is made public. First up, how exactly does this thing go around corners?

“Well, it is counterintuitive,” said chief designer Ben Bowlby, formerly of Lola Cars. “For a long time, we all believed that the world was flat, because it's counterintuitive to think that it's round, or spheroid or whatever.”

Before he described how the DeltaWing turns, Bowlby started out describing the basic concept and the physics behind it. The craft is both simple and at the same time somewhat delicate.

“In this case, the tire capacity, the mass distribution and the aero distribution are all in harmony,” Bowlby explained. “The result is that the car is actually balanced.”

Given that it's a rear-wheel-drive configuration, Bowlby said the DeltaWing is extremely well-balanced, with the optimum distribution for traction and braking.

“With a two-wheel-drive car, you put the majority of the tractive capacity at the end that's going to have the weight transfer and acceleration,” he explained. “But equally interesting is braking stability, which is also a function of trying to have more than 50 percent of the braking behind the center of gravity. This is perhaps one of the most unique aspects of the DeltaWing, that from a racing-car perspective it does have more than 50 percent of the braking behind the center of gravity.”

So no matter how much force you apply, there's a self-correcting stability. Like an arrow, sort of.

“It's a combination of factors, and really it's a result of throwing away the rule book,” Bowlby continued. “Racers have become constrained by regulations, and so by throwing away the rule book and saying, ‘Hey let's do something that is in line with our times, which is to get more for less, right?' That's what we did.”

The idea is that with less aerodynamic drag, less car and less weight, you can drive the same race distance as everyone else, using less fuel.

But that still doesn't explain how the car turns.

“Well, obviously, the front wheels steer, and the front wheels have a very long lever arm to the center of gravity and the amount of mass, the amount of weight, on those tires means that the contact-patch pressure load, per square inch if you like, is the same at the front as it is at the rear,” he said. “So it's all in tune. So the result is that the front has the ability to cause the car to change direction very quickly. But then, somewhat unique to here, the majority of weight transfer, like 97 percent, occurs across the widely-spaced rear tires.

“Obviously, the center of gravity has to be between the widely spaced rear tires, otherwise you have a completely unstable device that will fall over. Essentially a delta-plan-form car, otherwise known as a tricycle gear, has to have the weight distribution very carefully observed. There isn't a huge latitude to where you put it. In a conventional rectangular layout, you have the ability to put the center of gravity in a lot of places, and it stays stable. In a delta-wing form you have to observe it very carefully. So you don't want the weight distribution 5 percent further forward, and you don't want it 5 percent further back. You have one spot. In racing, you can control that and end up with a very optimum tire utilization and light weight.”

Bowlby said that there is almost no torsional loading on the chassis, because there is not a pair of axles with their own stiffness.

“Three points makes a plane no matter where you put them. So the result is the chassis is under a very small amount of load. And there isn't a balance effect of different roll stiffness distributions. The car always has an intrinsic balance as a function of its mass, tire capacity and aerodynamic distribution.”

The differential has capacity for vectoring torque to either wheel (or for remaining open), but the car is stable without that torque vectoring.

“Our intention is to make the tuning of the car's balance driver-adjustable,” Bowlby said. “That's a slightly lofty goal at the moment, but all of our simulations have been done without torque vectoring.”

The DeltaWing is a collaborative effort between American Le Mans Series founder Don Panoz, Highcroft Racing, Ganassi Racing and Gurney's All American Racers. The Automobile Club de l'Ouest, the Le Mans organizer, has agreed to let the DeltaWing run as part of its Garage 56, the 56th entry in the field at the June race this summer. The idea is to promote innovation.

The car was, of course, offered up originally as an alternate to the traditional Izod IndyCar Series chassis but rejected by IndyCar in favor of a more conventional design from Dallara. Where it goes after Le Mans is anyone's guess. But just seeing it run laps around a track was a big step.

“It's more than three years that we've been waiting,” said Bowlby. “I have to say that without Dan, it would not have been possible. He knows the process of idea to race track and realized that if we don't start now, it ain't gonna happen, so let's get going.”

Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/2012...#ixzz1o0JcAcde

* But wait, there's more.

[MitchZ06]

Originally Posted by ptclaus98

1) It's a sportscar tub, with two seats. One actually probably big enough to seat my fat ass in.

Your point? It could have had a single seater tub and it'd still be racing (no rules on G56...).

Originally Posted by ptclaus98

2) It looks miles better as a sportscar, much more refined.

Matter of opinion, people say the R18 is ugly but I prefer its looks over the DeltaWing and I'd say the Aston Lola looks far better than the Wang too.

[jhansen]

Originally Posted by Adam43

As long as someone is wrong that is all that matters

Anything you can say, I can say better, I can say anything better than you...

No you can't.

Yes I can!

No you can't.

Yes I can, yes I can!

[AGD]

Originally Posted by davehenrie

If man was meant to race with his feet up in the air, then we'd all have F1 cars with Lazy Boy recliners in the cockpits.

Boogity, boogity, boogity?

Ugly owners too.

What about team bosses? We could all do with less Ullrich. Well, less Ullrich on the TV at least.

But, anyway, aesthetics matter. Doubly so in this form of racing. Yeah, I agree that function is more important than form, but so much of the history and mystique of sports car racing is embedded with beautiful looking cars. When people put up a racing poster or a piece of sports car racing artwork, it's usually of a beautiful racing machine. There's something captivating about a beautiful sports car. We all know the feeling. I don't need to explain it. Some other series have beautiful racing cars too, but sports car racing is on it's own level in that regard.

Originally Posted by MitchZ06

I think it's ugly too but I'm not against it for that. Mainly that it's designed to replace a single seater and they're usually open wheelers and they have no place in sportscar racing, not to mention everything bar the shape is a lie (they could do all they want to do with a normal prototype....).

True.

Originally Posted by ptclaus98

1) It's a sportscar tub, with two seats. One actually probably big enough to seat my fat ass in.

2) It looks miles better as a sportscar, much more refined.

So then can we consider a early generation Indianapolis car to be a sports car then? They had two seats and they actually had to use both of them! IMO, a single seater WR from the 90s looks more like a sports car than the Wang. Granted, I guess it's a stretch no matter what.

Originally Posted by Matt

I think people calling it the "wang" are pretty immature.

Fine. Delta Ding-a-ling. I think that is FCC safe.

[davehenrie]

Originally Posted by Matt

I think people calling it the "wang" are pretty immature.

Shall we borrow from the Aero Industry? The Griphen? Typhoon? Viggen? Vulcan? The Tejas?

dh

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by AGD

Fine. Delta Ding-a-ling. I think that is FCC safe.

PM sent to poster.

[The Badger]

Originally Posted by Victor_RO

IT RUNS, IT TURNS, IT LIVES!

I could put a briggs & straton engine in a pram on solid rubber tyres and say the same !!!

Forgive me for not wetting myself in excitment ...............

[Victor_RO]

Originally Posted by The Badger

I could put a briggs & straton engine in a pram on solid rubber tyres and say the same !!!

Forgive me for not wetting myself in excitment ...............

Don't confuse Caps Lock with automatic excitement.

[DeathOrGlory]

ITS.... ALIIIIIIIVVVVEEEEEEE!!!!

Would that work?

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by MitchZ06

.....and I'd say the Aston Lola looks far better than the Wang too.

Forgive me for not reading back through the thread (I'd lose the will to live....), but is someone saying that the DW looks better than the Lola Aston.....?

[davehenrie]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

Forgive me for not reading back through the thread (I'd lose the will to live....), but is someone saying that the DW looks better than the Lola Aston.....?

No you got that reversed. The original poster was saying the Lola Built Aston Martin was one of many cars that is superior to the DW in the looks department. I would, however, nominate the AMR-1 as a suitable ugly car to compare the Wing to.

dh

[Aysedasi]

Ah, I see, it seemed an incongruous comparison!

[Aysedasi]

OK, enough is enough. Perhaps we should close the thread until such time as we can think up a new word. Nothing like doubling the vocabulary.......