The Delta Wing race car has been running at tracks across the world for a couple of seasons now. Originally designed as a replacement chassis for IndyCar, the innovative machine was not chosen for that path and has instead seen action at races like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 12 Hours of Sebring, American Le Mans Series, and more. Because it is so drastically different than anything that is currently on a course and ever has been, we dig it. This is about as far outside the box as modern race car design gets and who doesn’t enjoy seeing the barriers and perception of racers get expanded and pushed for the advancement of technology. The newest wrinkle in the Delta Wing story is the announcement and public showing of a Delta Wing Coupe that will compete in the LMP1 (Le Mans Prototype 1) class at the ALMS races and we’re guessing at Le Mans itself. We’re on the fence about it though.
Part of us thinks that it is cool to have the driver enclosed and all but there’s another side of us that thinks the thing looks goofy as hell with the big bubble there in the center of the car. If the roofline were sucked down some and the structure were more angular perhaps it would change our opinion, but jeez, it is a tough call from our end. The open version of the car looks bad ass in our eyes, but this looks at little like the car that Ace and Gary, Saturday Night Live’s infamous “ambiguously gay duo” cruised around in on the show. Egads.
WHAT’S YOUR TAKE? IS THE NEW DELTA WING COUPE COOL OR TOO WEIRD FOR YOU TO LIKE?
Sebring was bad news for this “car”.
At LeMans last year it was punted by another car.
It is too small and light to be mixing it up with the rest of the field.
There is no compelling reason for the thing to be there , and the developers
having failed to become the new Indy car , just looked for somewhere to put it.
Paint it flat black, put a big vertical stabilizer on it and put it in the next Batman movie.
From day one I thought it would be at home on the salt flats.
Put a Top Fuel engine in the rear and turn it into funny car.
Its too small … the other drivers hate the thing being on track … it doesn’t perform as advertised … it solves nothing / proves nothing / accomplishes nothing ….. and in fact is a waste of good time and money as well as being an on track safety hazard ….. as well as being ugly as sin to boot
Which …. is why Nissan dumped the thing ….. and Panoz should as well . Lets face it . Sometimes Gurney gets it right ( Indy ) and sometimes he biffs it big time ( the Alligator and this travesty of a race car )
Don’t like it. It looks ridiculous, which I could overlook if it weren’t JUST ANOTHER SPEC CAR. If the Indyots has thrown out the rule book and ONE team showed up with this thing it would be wicked cool.
Ace and Gary for sure,just paint it flesh tones and add hair . “What are you looking at?”
As a former FSAE participant in university, the delta wing is an exciting project. Yes it doesn’t fit into any of the categories that exist in that type of racing, and I doubt it will have a class of it’s own. But it shows that chassis design engineering is not dead, and not everyone assumes there is one way to build a car to go around a track. Keep in mind, the things learned during development and testing are all valuable (even to conventional race cars).
Go you little triangular bastard, GO!
Mr. Harder is right, this is a rolling prototype laboratory & not a proven class winning competitor. It’s going to have both strengths & flaws but in the end lessons will be learned.
It’s definitely ugly and too small for my liking but I hope anyone who works on another prototype should make it better than this.