What's the story with the Nissan Delta Wing at Le Mans?, Strange looking machine Options

[Mark Henry]

I think it's cool that it's a GREEN car, but if they had have painted it bright lime GREEN maybe the other car would have seen it and wouldn't have bumped it across the GREEN. I'm just GREEN with envy that they got to race at La Mans, it must take a lot of GREEN to afford that. Did you see them peel off at the GREEN light and through the GREEN trees. Plus that GREEN engine was so efficiant (think GREEN) on gas.

Ok now I'm just rambling about GREEN...so I'll quit it and go mow my GREEN lawn....

GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN

BTW has Slits gone GREEN yet?
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[Richard Casto]

The low frontal area reduces drag, true...........but it also reduces visability and what concerns me is that when running against the other cars, in a pack in the turns, a slight bumb to the side of the frontal area of the Delta appears to easily cause it to be taken out. The Delta is a very small car, very light, which has it's pros and cons.

Again I thought the original idea was to make all the Indi cars Deltas. The Delta design is actually some what similar to Indi, or F1 Cars if you could move their front wheels in tight to their narrow nose.
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I do agree that it didn't hold up well when hit by a heavier car. It was boom! and right off the track.

I do think actually the frontal visibility on the Deltawing was the best of any prototype at LM. What has been a real problem recently has been that it has become fashionable for the P1/P2 prototypes to have larger front wheels (wide and tall). Couple that with the migration toward coupes (closed cockpit with small windows) and drivers who are nearly laying down open wheel style, they have very limited views and there has been a number of prototype collisions in which the speculation is that the driver just couldn't see the other car. The viewing angle out the windows is small and the height of the drivers head is below that of the front fenders. I hate to keep going on about the 2014 FIA/ACO prototype rules, but they are going to require that the drivers sight-line to be higher than the fenders and for them to sit a bit more forward. The idea being that they can actually see over the front fenders and that by moving forward, the angle of view out the window is larger.

If anyone cares to look here is the press release for the 2014 P1 rules. Its not the official rules, but it hits the high points...

http://www.lemans.org/wpphpFichiers/1/1/re...lation_2014.pdf

Last few pages goes into fixing sight-line issues.

(I just re-read you post after I posted my reply above and realized you probably were talking about how hard it was to see the DW and not that the DW driver has poor visibility. I think it all comes together to make it hard to see other cars with current prototype designs).

Richard

[Spoke]

The first I saw the delta wing design was when INDYCAR was looking for ideas for their new car.

This one was way out of the box and was not selected over the Dallara. As said, 1/2 the HP, 2x fuel mileage, and cool looking as hell.

Glad to see it put through its paces at LM.