A different Delta Wing article

steronz wrote:

alfadriver wrote: What would the point of that be? I don't understand the "why" part. The point is to reduce the drag- so why would you want to increase it? Fundamentally- the point I saw was to be less- particularly in terms of weight and drag- so that one could run a smaller engine, and use less fuel to go the entire race. If you increase drag, the answer is pretty obvious what you would end up with- all the rest of the cars out there were examples of that. Why limit the fundamental advantage that it is intended to get? That's not DOE, that's just not liking the idea.

He doesn't want to increase drag on the Deltawing, he wants someone to create a second car, with the same weight, power, and fuel tank as the Deltawing, but with a more conventional layout, and test those two cars against each other. The concept behind the Deltawing is that you can drastically narrow the front track of a car to get better aerodynamics. Conventional wisdom says that this is going to give you less stability and less grip, which would equate to slower laptimes. The Deltawing designers are either suggesting that conventional wisdom is wrong, or that the aero improvements more than make up for it. Testing their hypothesis using cars that weigh twice as much and have twice the power is pointless.

I may have missed something, but part of that experiment was run over last weekend. The Deltawing did run at LeMans, did record lap times in the 3:42-45 times, which is comparable with cars that were classed in P2. Which strongly implies that it does handle well enough.

That part of the question was answered quite well, as far as I could tell.

BTW, the post DID suggest to increase the drag on the Deltawing- unless I read the statement wrong:

Limit it's advantages to Drag and Aero caused by it's fundemental shape and see how it does.

That seems pretty clear.

Raze wrote:

nocones wrote: Steronz and 93ExCivic are saying what I want to say better.

So then what I gather is that you believe conventional wisdom based on set rules and known boundary conditions, i.e. a large history of knowledge which works under a large set of operating conditions is your baseline of 'performance' racing. You thus welcome the challenge of new knowledge which should be sampled under controlled conditions and that data should be measured and compared against a nominal subset of similar data from the historical database of performance racing to determine its statistical importance, i.e. scientific method. Or, more simply... You want proof the gods of aerodynamics exist.

Not really at all. I want the Aerodynamic advantages to be seperated from the weight size advantages to prove that the hypothesis that the deltawing was built for is sound. Most easily that would take the form of building a normal car that would match the rule set (with the obvious difference being front track width) that could be built around the current form of the Deltawing (weight, power, allowed undercar Aero). If the Deltawing then trounced this car in a endurance race the aerodynamic advantages of the Deltawing are real and powerful. If it lost then it would show that the Aerodynamic advantages were not enough to overcome any dynamic issues brought about by the unique layout of the Deltawing.

In reply to nocones:

Now I get what you mean. The quoted statement must be read differently.

Make weight, power, and fuel the same, limit the differences between the cars to JUST the aero and drag, and then see what happens. Got it. Sorry about the confusion- I read "limit the aero and drag and see if it's still fast."

Still, the major point to what the ACO was getting at was to reduce aero drag so that they would use less fuel. So....

alfadriver wrote: Still, the major point to what the ACO was getting at was to reduce aero drag so that they would use less fuel. So....

I wonder if this same goal could be acchieved with a more traditional car by simply allowing for much less weight and different underbody aero that what is allowed today.
I think to drive this goal they should create a class with a HP limit, an absolute bare minimum weight determined by what it takes to ensure a safe crash structure when on the track with the 2200-2400lb normal car, and that's about it. Let the designers run wild with vehicle size, aero devices, etc. The HP limit will limit downforce by requiring you to not have to much drag to allow fast enough speeds to have good laptimes. This should ensure all of these vehicles would have superior to current fuel use because a 300hp motor is going to use less fuel in 3:42 seconds than a 600hp one. If the deltawing could win this class and post the fastest lap time out of any 300hp car then by all means lets make a fleet of them.

nocones wrote: I think to drive this goal they should create a class with a HP limit,

IMHO, a better way to do that is limit fuel flow. That way you get a reasonable range of power available, and you let clever engineers find ways to get more power out of less fuel. But that's a different thread.

Seems to me that you could make a case for the Delta Wing car being a superior design in terms of HP/speed ratio. I don't see a bunch of hype here. If you ran it within existing HP/weight limitations, it would sweep the track. The Delta Wing was running with one hand tied behind it's back due to low HP. I think that the trick here is to encourage interesting designs while allowing existing classes to run. As has been suggested, the key would be to have a class wherein certain weight/HP/drag ratios are in force.Race whatever you brung within limitations. Could be great fun.

alfadriver wrote:

nocones wrote: I think to drive this goal they should create a class with a HP limit,

IMHO, a better way to do that is limit fuel flow. That way you get a reasonable range of power available, and you let clever engineers find ways to get more power out of less fuel. But that's a different thread.

"Here is your tanker of fuel. How far can you go in 24 hours?"

I like it.

I'm not sure you can separate the aero from the rest of the Delta Wing, honestly. It was a different concept. The packaging allowed for the weight distribution that let the packaging work.

Watch the video of the crash, it's fairly clear what happened. Lots of cars, not much visibility, a loss in situational awareness on the part of the Toyota driver. I don't think any other car would have fared any differently.

I always hated the mentality of "hey that works too good, ban it" that has plagued racing for far too long.

Maybe ban it for the current season so that year's cars will remain competitive, but after that the gloves should come off and game on again.

jstein77 wrote: Looks like the DeltaWing retired after 39 laps, about 6 hours into the event. The results don't specify why, but I suspect collision damage had something to do with it. Looks like their lap times were about midway between the LMP1 and LmGTE cars, and only a few seconds off of the LMP2 cars. Pretty good first race, I'd say.

Especially for the first run of a radically designed car with a reasonably weak 300hp.

MCarp22 wrote: Interestingly enough, Kazumi Nakajima walked over to the DeltaWing garage and apologized in person!

Was that before or after he went on a ferris wheel ride.

Oh and as far as the fuel tank size being different, there was nothing to lose to just let them run the same tank size as everyone else since they were not really racing more than testing. I think the ACO should have just let them have at it. The changes to fuel tanks and crap like that is for when it becomes classified in a run group. Much like the diesels started getting restrictions.

In reply to kreb:

How in any way does it look superior? It's less than 2/3 the weight of an lmp2 car with 2/3 or more the power and it's slower.

Since when is proving you can make a lighter car go fast on less hp than a heavier car revolutionary?

How can you prove you are better if you are not going to play by the same rules everyone else is limited to?

I just remembered - back in the late 60s, Le Mans cars did have to meet a minimum fuel economy number. It wasn't spectacular, but it was there. It came in partway through the GT40 era IIRC.

B430 wrote: In reply to kreb: How in any way does it look superior? It's less than 2/3 the weight of an lmp2 car with 2/3 or more the power and it's slower. Since when is proving you can make a lighter car go fast on less hp than a heavier car revolutionary? How can you prove you are better if you are not going to play by the same rules everyone else is limited to?

In racing, particularly at LeMans, drag is a BIG deal. So to be one of the faster cars of P2 with only 300hp, and should use less fuel (which we will never really know unless data from the brief time it ran is published)- is not just lightening the car.

The speed trap times it ran put it among the faster P2 cars, lap times have it mid pack P2. So it's not exactly slower. Mid pack, for sure.

I think having an amount of fuel given to you to use is an awesome idea.

Anti-stance wrote: I think having an amount of fuel given to you to use is an awesome idea.

They commented that is the future of the LMP 1 category, they'll only restrict fuel amounts and leave power, cylinders, turbos, and other tech to be unrestricted....

1/2 the weight, 1/2 the horsepower, 1/2 the drag, but much better than half the speed...

Will be interesting to see of Panoz builds a series for them out here in the US

The car is designed to be LMP 1. It was well off the pace in that regard.

Didn't the powers that be also add a certain lap time they could not go under? So make them run with less fuel and make them go slower than they can as well as have lots less HP than the competition - yeah that seems fair.

The Delta Wing designers imposed their own HP limit on the car, to see if reducing the frontal area could make up for less hp.

Half the fuel means a LOT less weight.

And imposing a "you can't go faster than this" lap time would be a first ever from the ACO. They havn't done it on any other garage 56 car over the years.

If you look at the results, the Deltawing's best lap of 3:45.737 (per wikipedia) would have placed it 9th out of 12, had it been classed in LMP2. I don't know crap about LMP cars, so I looked up the Oreca 03, where I see that it was limited to 460 bhp. Not exactly "twice" the Deltawing's horsepower.

So, a little more than 1/2 the weight, about 2/3 the horsepower, less drag, and it can run in the middle of the back half of LMP2.

I will say this, though -- if they let it run a normal LMP2 fuel tank, it probably would have dominated. Since it was 375 kg lighter than the LMP2 cars, I'm not sure how they'd rationalize that.

Like I said, the Delta Wing is a LMP 1 car.

racerfink wrote: Like I said, the Delta Wing is a LMP 1 car.

What makes it an LMP1 car exactly? Honest question, consider me completely LeMans ignorant.

yamaha wrote:

Anti-stance wrote: I think having an amount of fuel given to you to use is an awesome idea.

They commented that is the future of the LMP 1 category, they'll only restrict fuel amounts and leave power, cylinders, turbos, and other tech to be unrestricted....

Having a set quantity of fuel available seems a lot cooler than simple economy restrictions. Then you get to play off fuel stops as well. I'll have to go back to my books, but I think the Toyota hybrids were turning the same number of laps between fuel stops that the small block GT40s were. Might have been 917s.

The one rule that I think was particularly goofy this year was the handicap given to the Audi hybrids. Because the electric motors were on the front wheels, they weren't allowed to use them below 120 kmh to minimize the advantage of AWD. Toyota was allowed to run their hybrid setup all the time, which actually had some advantages when leaving the pits as the car could get moving under electric power and save the clutch.

That rule should have been tossed, then the engineers would have to weigh the packaging advantages versus the traction advantages and it would have had better real-world applications. But the rule went in because Peugeot and Toyota whimpered.

In reply to steronz:

I do know that LMP 2 cars are much more tightly controlled, and their powerplants are much more "stock" than LMP 1, but I've never gone through the rule book.