Chris Harris drives the Deltawing

I am still trying to understand all the hate thrown towards this neat car.

mad_machine wrote: I am still trying to understand all the hate thrown towards this neat car.

My guess is it's due to its looks. Part of the appeal of racing to the fans is how cool the car looks and the Deltawing is a seriously goofy looking contraption. Remember the Walrus Williams F1 car? It didn't matter how much they repeated that it's aerodynamically superior. It's kind of like if the Aztek was the quietest, fastest, most comfortable and most efficient car in the world, it would still be hated as an ugly heap of poo. Sure there are people that like both but the general consensus is well... what it is.

BigD wrote: It's kind of like if the Aztek was the quietest, fastest, most comfortable and most efficient car in the world, it would still be hated as an ugly heap of poo. Sure there are people that like both but the general consensus is well... what it is.

didn't you just descibe the prius?

mad_machine wrote: didn't you just descibe the prius?

It's hardly the most efficient.

I have to admit I'm quickly becoming a Chris Harris fanboi. He seems to have a good balance of tech, along with a direct style that's enjoyable to watch.

I really like the technology and innovation that's gone in the Deltawing and would like to see more of them out there racing. It's rare that we see such a clean-sheet design, and I applaud the team for putting this one together. Sure, it looks weird, but it seems to perform well - and that's the bottom line for me.

That analogy Harris made, likening driving the deltawing to driving an old 911 got me wondering if you couldn't take 911 brake/suspension tuning in a similar direction... and not stuff it in the first hedge you saw and decorate the countryside with Stuttgart's finest example of bad ideas brilliantly executed

BigD wrote:

mad_machine wrote: I am still trying to understand all the hate thrown towards this neat car.

My guess is it's due to its looks. Part of the appeal of racing to the fans is how cool the car looks and the Deltawing is a seriously goofy looking contraption. Remember the Walrus Williams F1 car? It didn't matter how much they repeated that it's aerodynamically superior. It's kind of like if the Aztek was the quietest, fastest, most comfortable and most efficient car in the world, it would still be hated as an ugly heap of poo. Sure there are people that like both but the general consensus is well... what it is.

I like how it looks. I love how radically different it is in terms of engineering. Everything about it is neat and proves how bland all the spec-racer crap out there is. This is real, honest-to-God innovation and it's fantastic.

I'd love to see it take another stab at LeMans. It would be amazing to see it finish.

Massive props to Nissan for sponsoring it, too.

Great piece.

I know some people find it weird.. but this is not rocket science in the production and of the delta wing. but just good ideas and a clean sheet approach to making the car work harmony with itself.

I would like to see a couple different makers step up to the plate with stuff like this... or at least give the Delta it's own class to let several of them duke it out

I want one! I don't care I looks awesome I just want it!

mad_machine wrote: I am still trying to understand all the hate thrown towards this neat car.

My annoyance, if you'll accept my anecdote, is that the DeltaWing begged for special treatment. I guess it was designed for IndyCar, and it failed to win the bid. That should have been the end of it, but it was trotted out on the internet as some great injustice, and then the internet rejoiced when it was accepted into LeMans, as if justice was being served.

But what justice? As far as I'm concerned, it's still an unproven concept. Until it competes against cars with identical weights and powerplants, its performance remains unknown. We know it's faster than it looks like it should be, but we don't know if it's faster than any other 900lb car with 320hp and a more conventional layout. Some of us, I think, are getting tired of all the media coverage of what's essentially an unproven prototype.

I will say that the Chris Harris video has changed my opinion drastically, by pointing out that the design goal of the DW was to have a high downforce car that could pull 4 Gs in corners without creating a bunch of drag. That's an interesting engineering goal, and it's part of a larger goal of creating an exciting one-make racing series. Viewed in that context, the DW is actually pretty cool. But the media coverage up to this point hasn't been pushing this as a better alternative to the current Indy car, they've been hailing it as the greatest thing to happen to racing since forever, and I just don't think it can live up to the hype.

In reply to steronz:

I can accept that answer. in the context you present it, you make prefect sense.

From an engineering standpoint, I think the car has what it takes to stand on it's own four wheels.. and I await a race series for it

steronz -

I can understand your point. I think there's a lot of hype around this car because it's really one of the first clean-sheet racing cars in recent memory. (Now that I've said that, I'm sure someone will prove me wrong with many other examples of clean-sheet designs.) Remember when the companies first started racing diesels at LeMans - everyone was up in arms. Now, I think everyone appreciates what they've done for the sport (sound non-withstanding). To me, the Deltawing does the same thing, it challenges the more power, more tire, more downforce camp by saying less weight, more design, less power, less (overall) tire, and more efficiency. In general, that's where I'd like to see mainstream cars go, as well. Not that I don't appreciate a V8 brute (I love them!), but with $4 gas a reality, a lighter car with similar performance and more efficiency appeals to me.

For me, it's fun to see racing evolve over time. The Deltawing it breaks up the monotony of everything else out there, and causes us to re-evaluate our conclusions. If you had asked me if a car with front tires the width of a space saver spare could corner at 4Gs, I'd say "no way." Now, we're seeing that's possible. Same for a car with a very limited front track - I still can't wrap my head around how it turns, it looks more like a land speed record car than something that would go around corners. What other "truths" out there can be disproven, and what new knowledge can be applied to production cars to make them better?

With gas around $4 per gallon, I'd hope that there could be some carryover from what's learned from exercises like the Deltawing into production cars. It's very similar to how I feel about hybrids. I enjoy manufacturers pushing the envelope and seeing what's possible. Does that mean I like and appreciate V8 muscle any less - no! But on the other side, I like to see progress. There was a time when fuel injection was seen as the coming death of the performance car. On the contrary, performance and tuning has increased in leaps and bounds with the advent of fuel injection, especially when you're talking about modified cars. There are currently streetable cars running around with 600, 700, and 800 WHP!

My hope is that they get a series together, whether it be all Deltawings or compeltely different cars within the same parameters (weight and HP/TQ). You're correct, it's still relatively unproven, but I'd like to see it actually race so they can take the knowledge and make it better. One of the reasons I like F1 so much is that there is constant development and creativity, and I think the Deltawing could give us some of that, but on a less-expensive scale.

steronz wrote:

mad_machine wrote: I am still trying to understand all the hate thrown towards this neat car.

My annoyance, if you'll accept my anecdote, is that the DeltaWing begged for special treatment. I guess it was designed for IndyCar, and it failed to win the bid. That should have been the end of it, but it was trotted out on the internet as some great injustice, and then the internet rejoiced when it was accepted into LeMons, as if justice was being served. But what justice? As far as I'm concerned, it's still an unproven concept. Until it competes against cars with identical weights and powerplants, its performance remains unknown. We know it's faster than it looks like it should be, but we don't know if it's faster than any other 900lb car with 320hp and a more conventional layout. Some of us, I think, are getting tired of all the media coverage of what's essentially an unproven prototype. I will say that the Chris Harris video has changed my opinion drastically, by pointing out that the design goal of the DW was to have a high downforce car that could pull 4 Gs in corners without creating a bunch of drag. That's an interesting engineering goal, and it's part of a larger goal of creating an exciting one-make racing series. Viewed in that context, the DW is actually pretty cool. But the media coverage up to this point hasn't been pushing this as a better alternative to the current Indy car, they've been hailing it as the greatest thing to happen to racing since forever, and I just don't think it can live up to the hype.

It would be faster, because it has half the drag.

AtticusTurbo27 wrote: It would be faster, because it has half the drag.

And would the reduced drag make up for a (potential) lack of mechanical grip? Would a car with wings and more drag pull 5 Gs in the turns? Is 4 Gs a peak number or is that sustainable? Would it get dive-bombed in every corner by a car with more tire in the front?

steronz wrote:

AtticusTurbo27 wrote: It would be faster, because it has half the drag.

And would the reduced drag make up for a (potential) lack of mechanical grip? Would a car with wings and more drag pull 5 Gs in the turns? Is 4 Gs a peak number or is that sustainable? Would it get dive-bombed in every corner by a car with more tire in the front?

Now you are trying to compare apples to oranges. It uses 2, 4" tires to turn the front so your car for comparison could have 8" ones in the front to equal it out. Also the conventional car would need a equal sized fuel tank, since yet another advantage of the deltawing is its superior fuel economy.

The people who designed it didn't just want to make a funny looking car. If a conventional car could work as efficiently then this would have never been created.

Well, I think they designed a car that would make Indy racing more viewer-friendly; since they didn't design the car around any particular engine, and since it was supposed to be a one-make series, I don't think efficiency was the priority. But I'll grant that it will need fewer pit stops than a more conventional car. That's yet another variable.

But that's kind of my whole point. We've been racing apples for decades; we know what apples taste like, and we generally approve. There are good apples and bad apples, and we're free to argue about which apples we like best. Now they've created an orange. At first glance, it looked gross; wrong color, bumpy skin. But we tasted it and it wasn't as bad as we expected. That doesn't mean oranges are better than apples, though, and we don't know if this particular orange is even very good at being an orange.

What I'd like to see, personally, is a scaled up version of the Delta Wing designed around LMP1 specs. Heavier and more powerful, but with all the efficiency advantages.

Maybe I'm just rationalizing my dislike of the thing, but I just put my finger on one of the aspects that makes it less compelling to me: Cars are rectangular in plan view because it makes sense for them to be thus, if you're going to do things like put more than a driver and an engine in one.

I have a general desire for racing to teach us something applicable to "real" cars. It's why I'm pleased to see F1 moving to lower-revving turbo engines, and why I wouldn't miss GPS-enabled electronics that set MotoGP bikes up differently from corner to corner if they went away. While there are some engineering lessons to be learned from turning a V10 to 20,000 RPM, most of the nuances aren't that applicable to a grocery getter, even a sporting one.

On the flipside, building to eke every hundreth of a second lap time from a very restrictive ruleset also doesn't seem like the best way to spur useful innovation. The DW does at least demonstrate some seriously different ways of doing things.

Thinking of F1 and MotoGP, I wonder which is really less expensive: gambling on coming up with a working innovation in a wide-open ruleset, or relying on a few key decisions and around-the-clock wind tunnel testing for months...

Oops. I think I digressed.

Being rectangular in plan view is about the only thing F1 cars have in common with grocery getters, so why hang on to that? Top Fuel dragsters are shaped more like the DeltaWing than anything else when you think about it. F1 used to sport oddballs like six wheeled cars and big "cooling fans", and I miss that freedom to try something really odd.

The DeltaWing is one interesting creature. Not necessarily the light weight aspect, but the packaging is a big break from tradition and it has us thinking about things we took for granted. That's good. And we've learned one thing: it shouldn't be black

It has yet to finish a race,so superior or not has yet to be proven, In two times on track with other cars, it gets wrecked. Coincidence or something else ?

You don't consider the fifth place at Petit Le Mans to be finishing a race?

And the reason it didn't finish had nothing to do with the Delta wing, it was other drivers.

I do agree that black is the wrong colour...

I would just like to interject that I'm quite fond of Mr. Harris. He's easily my favorite on-camera autojournalist.

Keith Tanner wrote: You don't consider the fifth place at Petit Le Mans to be finishing a race?

Sorry, didn't read the results. Only fith, out of how many cars ? Until it wins outright , going away will it be called a success. I like the wheels to be on all four corners.

iceracer wrote:

Keith Tanner wrote: You don't consider the fifth place at Petit Le Mans to be finishing a race?

Sorry, didn't read the results. Only fith, out of how many cars ? Until it wins outright , going away will it be called a success. I like the wheels to be on all four corners.

The last line sums it up. You're going to dismiss it until there's absolutely no way you can dismiss it anymore because you just don't like the idea.

Fifth out of 42. Hopefully that's enough for it to be significant. And this is a single car that's still early in the development cycle, racing against cars produced and raced in larger quantities with the knowledge base that implies.