The pencil-nosed Nissan DeltaWIng must be the most controversial road racing car in recent years. Here at Motor City Garage, we’ve placed the arguments on pause for a moment to have a look at how the car actually behaves on the track.
Originally conceived by designer Ben Bowlby for Indianapolis, the DeltaWing was ultimately rejected by the oval-track world as too radical. With horsepower and backing from Nissan, Highcroft Racing and Dan Gurney’s All-American Racers repurposed the narrow-front-track concept as an endurance racer and took it to LeMans, where it’s been no less controversial.
Much of the brouhaha goes right down to the basic dynamic character of the vehicle. (Like: does the car actually go around corners and, if so, how.) Instead of adding to all that blabbering on both sides, MCG thought if might be useful to look at some video. So here it is.
This in-car footage was recorded by Highcroft Racing in testing at Road Atlanta in preparation for the car’s next public appearance there at the Petit LeMans on October 20. As they say on television, you decide. And feel free to weigh in.
Seeing it onboard like that brings up the question: How easy it is to place the rear tires, since you have so little at the front to reference it against? Perhaps professional race drivers would have no problem adapting.
Just a case of doing something different for the sake of being different;
Translation: Dumb!
Why do it, they are just going to be getting in the way, as they did at LeMans.
As a former employee of Nissan Motor, they do some great things, but not this time.
I don’t think it was done for the sake of being different. If I understand correctly, the aerodynamics are significantly more efficient.