Delta Wing projections?

[Napolis]

One thing 4 sure.

Alternate Energy is going to be a part of Racing.

[David Lind]

Alternate fuel racing is only acceptable if it still makes noise! I'm all for the DW and other innovations, but I would not, quite frankly, want to see an entire grid full of Delta Wing cars. In fact, my interest in Indy car racing has dropped about 40% since it became a spec car series.

[Napolis]

Originally Posted by David Lind

Alternate fuel racing is only acceptable if it still makes noise! I'm all for the DW and other innovations, but I would not, quite frankly, want to see an entire grid full of Delta Wing cars. In fact, my interest in Indy car racing has dropped about 40% since it became a spec car series.

P 4/5 Competizione M (KERS) still makes noise.

The question to me about the Delta Wing is how is this relevant to sports cars?

It's not a real 2 seater. What relevance does it's technology have to road cars?

[2NA]

Originally Posted by Napolis

This is less of an issue than you might imagine as the regulators won't let it be too big of an advantage.

With our KERS at the Ring we could do 10 lap stints which would over the 24 make a difference but they'll only allow us to do 9 lap stints as it would be an unfair advantage.

They try to equalize Petrol and Diesel cars as well by regulating tank size.

It's supposed to be racing not peewee soccer. Creating an advantage is supposed to be what it's about.

Rule changes to influence the outcome is what's unfair.

[2NA]

Originally Posted by PSk

I'd still hate to race this thing ... one thing doing laps and having to judge/guess where the rear wheels are, but in the thick of a battle this thing is going to trip over other cars.

I find it amazing that the shape makes that bigger aero difference to warrant that driveability issue ... surely we can get the same aero advantages and have a wide front track so the car could be accurately placed in corners and battles ... ?

Maybe that will be version 2 ...
Pete

My guess is if there's a crash, there won't be a version 2.

[texasmr2]

I atleast hope the camera gives it some airtime so we can see how she corners, we might be right or we could be surprised.

[Bill Sawyer]

Originally Posted by 2NA

If DW performs well, expect a significant rule change, against it.

There are other racing venues besides Le Mans.

[texasmr2]

Originally Posted by Bill Sawyer

There are other racing venues besides Le Mans.

Very true and there could be shorter wheelbased versions for various tracks. I think all I am hoping for is that it finish's the race as that would be a huge achievement.

[TurboFreak650]

Originally Posted by 2NA

My guess is if there's a crash, there won't be a version 2.

That's the problem with racing, there WILL crashes and you will have wheel-to-wheel battles. And I don't think it will fare well in those situations. Much like a "Smart" car wouldn't be very smart to have a wreck in.

I simply don't have interest in low HP/slick aero racing either, and I'm sure I'm not alone. What if they made the aero so slick that 200 HP would be enough to compete? No one would care because it wouldn't be exciting.

[pamparius]

You Tube

You Tube

[Kyoso_Joey]

What a waste.

[Fast_ian]

Originally Posted by Kyoso_Joey

What a waste.

I assume you mean that it got knocked out, not that they're trying something different?

If the former (and I hope so! ), that's racing unfortunately - You get involved in other peoples misfortunes all too often. **** happens!

Cheers,
Ian

[WCH]

"I assume you mean that it got knocked out, not that they're trying something different?"


Both.

I guess I'm in the minority; this has seemed to me to be a silly waste of money and effort from the moment I saw the car unveiled at Sebring.

Good riddance.

Ben Bowlby's answer to the future of American motorsport ... ignores the future of American motorsport, which you can find every weekend at karting tracks, and in the lower power spec formula series, and on dirt tracks ... not sitting in a circle jollying up a new batmobile.

[PSk]

It appears to me that it got knocked out so easily because there is not enough weight on the front wheels and thus the driver could do little to counter act the hit.

Personally I think it is great that we look for new ideas, but I would not have signed up to drive this car. Motorsport performance is made in the corners, this car had to have weaknesses in that area.
Pete

[Kyoso_Joey]

Originally Posted by Fast_ian

I assume you mean that it got knocked out, not that they're trying something different?

If the former (and I hope so! ), that's racing unfortunately - You get involved in other peoples misfortunes all too often. **** happens!

Cheers,
Ian

Its a waste that it got knocked out so early into the race and had transmission problems. I'm all about new and different ideas when it comes to motorsports. At least the driver was ok. He was so desperate to get back in the race too That wastegate sound makes me miss my old turbo car.

http://youtu.be/xi_AsxRuyus

[PCA Hack]

Originally Posted by WCH

"I assume you mean that it got knocked out, not that they're trying something different?"


Both.

I guess I'm in the minority; this has seemed to me to be a silly waste of money and effort from the moment I saw the car unveiled at Sebring.

Good riddance.

Ben Bowlby's answer to the future of American motorsport ... ignores the future of American motorsport, which you can find every weekend at karting tracks, and in the lower power spec formula series, and on dirt tracks ... not sitting in a circle jollying up a new batmobile.

I agree.

I just returned from Le Mans where I got an close look at the DW in the garage. Its absolutely absurd.

Again, I ask the question: What problems is the DW attempting to solve? What's the purpose of thinking "outside the box" if the end result of the exercise is pointless? They showed that a light car with low horsepower is more efficient than a heavier car with more horsepower? No sh#t. Congratulations for proving that a phallic-shaped vehicle with 4" front tires is capable of competently lapping Le Mans (which admittedly is more than I ever thought it would do). Now how does that translate into anything useful to other race cars or passenger cars? IMO, the DW is as relevant to endurance racing as Taco Bell is to the Michelin Restaurant Guide.

Its cool for Bowlbly to be able to prove his design - that's more than commendable - but other than him, who cares? Duncan Dayton would have run a mail truck as long as he was paid - he's got employees to support.

The Audi battleships have proven to be frighteningly fast, efficient, durable & relevant to what appears at your local dealer. That's useful technology & why manufactures pump in excess of $50 million into their Le Mans programs - not to stroke their ego.

God help me, if sportscars look like the DW in the future I'm going to become a Nascar fan.

[Napolis]

Originally Posted by PCA Hack

I agree.

I just returned from Le Mans where I got an close look at the DW in the garage. Its absolutely absurd.

Again, I ask the question: What problems is the DW attempting to solve? What's the purpose of thinking "outside the box" if the end result of the exercise is pointless? They showed that a light car with low horsepower is more efficient than a heavier car with more horsepower? No sh#t. Congratulations for proving that a phallic-shaped vehicle with 4" front tires is capable of competently lapping Le Mans (which admittedly is more than I ever thought it would do). Now how does that translate into anything useful to other race cars or passenger cars? IMO, the DW is as relevant to endurance racing as Taco Bell is to the Michelin Restaurant Guide.

Its cool for Bowlbly to be able to prove his design - that's more than commendable - but other than him, who cares? Duncan Dayton would have run a mail truck as long as he was paid - he's got employees to support.

The Audi battleships have proven to be frighteningly fast, efficient, durable & relevant to what appears at your local dealer. That's useful technology & why manufactures pump in excess of $50 million into their Le Mans programs - not to stroke their ego.

God help me, if sportscars look like the DW in the future I'm going to become a Nascar fan.

Ditto.

The flag dropped and the Bull**** stopped. A land speed Bonneville car which this resembled would have been fast on the straight as well. As the race progressed the DW moved further and further towards the back of the pack way behind even some GTE Amateurs much less P2's. A GTE at similar Power to Weight whould have left it FAR behind.

It can't seat 2 thus has no relevance to road cars and IMO was silly from the get go.

Le Mans is a high speed track with a lot fewer turns than The Ring. On a course like The Ring the DW wouldn't have a chance.

[Bill Sawyer]

Since many of you have questioned the relevance of the Delta Wing I would like to provide my viewpoint. Below I have posted an article I wrote for TheVirtualDriver.com on the lack of innovation in racing. The Delta Wing is mentioned further down in the article.

I hesitate to post this for two reasons. First, TheVirtualDriver.com is owned by Chris Sawyer, my brother, a long time auto journalist. To avoid conflict I reprint it here rather than direct you to his site.

Also, I work for one of the principles in the Delta Wing project, although I have no inside information and I do not work on automotive or racing projects. All views expressed in this article are my own and, to a lesser extent, my brother's. I have his permission to reprint it here.

If the moderators feel there is a conflict in posting this, please remove it; but I feel it is relevant based on the comments about the DW in this thread.

Innovation and the Death of Innocence
Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:00AM
By William G. Sawyer

I saw two sure signs that racing is at a crossroads during a recent Formula One broadcast. One was the Drag Reduction System, a device designed to create artificial on-track action. The other was a promotional spot for the next race featuring cars twirling through the air, drivers cheating death and buxom pit babes as the sport’s main selling points.

Am I just old and unappreciative of this new direction or is the sport so desperate it will resort to any gimmick to put butts in seats? And if the latter is true, how did it happen? What turned the “Sport of the Seventies” into the “Marketing Exercise of the Twenty-First Century”? It made me think about what caused me to gravitate toward motorsport and away from stick-and-ball pastimes.

I grew up in the mid-Sixties when revolution was in the air. Sexual mores were under attack, young people rejected the conventions of their parents and the civil rights movement was in full swing. All belief systems were suspect and tenets that endured for centuries crumbled under our feet.

As a young teen growing up in Dearborn, Michigan, I witnessed two revolutions first-hand in a city dominated by racism and race cars. Dearborn’s mayor, Orville Hubbard, fought the civil rights movement in a futile attempt to keep the city segregated. His slogan, “Keep Dearborn Clean”, had a double meaning that fooled only the most naïve. Elsewhere in my hometown speed demons took their own slogan, “Win on Sunday", Sell on Monday," to heart and thumbed their noses at the AMA anti-racing ban they had agreed to only a couple of years before.

Ford’s all-out racing effort led to victory in towns like Indianapolis, Daytona Beach and Le Mans, and much of the development work was done a mile or so from our house in a mysterious brown brick building on Haggerty Street. This was Kar Kraft, a quasi-factory skunk works, and it wasn’t long before tales of the mechanical mayhem concocted there spread among the car crazy youth in the neighborhood.

We made regular trips to Kar Kraft’s Dearborn shop hoping to catch a glimpse of what went on inside. Anything was possible in our minds’ eye as the rate of technological advancement inracing during the mid-Sixties was mind-boggling. Engines moved behind the driver, tires grew wide and cars sprouted wings suspended three feet in the air on what looked like broomsticks. The neurons in my brain and those of countless other young people, exploded as we took in the technical revolution fomented by Ford, their cross town rivals at GM and cocky Europeans like Porsche. The endorphin rush turned us into lifetime racing junkies and no rehab unit in the country could undo the damage.

Every race seemed to bring a new innovation and records fell like trophies from a shelf during an earthquake. Occasionally these improvements found their way onto street cars in diluted form. Rumors swirled about upcoming street models that would bridge the gap between racing and the road. Some, like the Z-28 and Boss 302, slipped past the bean counters, others did not. Ford’s Mach 2, a mid-engined Mustang built from as many production parts as possible, is a case in point. It was too radical and narrowly focused in 1970, much as its Mustang I ancestor had been in 1962.

On one of my trips past Kar Kraft a stock-looking Mustang with a deep, throaty exhaust note rumbled past on a test run. I was intrigued by the odd way it sat on its suspension, so I followed until I caught up with it at a stop sign. I stared indisbelief. There was a V-8 engine sitting where a rear passenger would normally reside, visible to all under the sloped back glass. What I had stumbled upon was likely an engineering mule. And, though I looked for it again and again, I never caught even a glimpse of it. It, like the production plans, was gone.

Yet this is what took place in the 1960s and early 1970s. The unusual and impossible became commonplace. You never knew what was going to happen next, in all the definitions — good and bad — of that phrase.

One day my neighbor Dave recounted a tale of intrigue and adventure at Kar Kraft that made my spine tingle. He and a couple of buddies rode their bikes down the alley behind the skunk works hoping to get a glimpse at the latest Ford racing project through an open door. But it was behind the property where they discovered a treasure in a garbage barrel that would make any young racing enthusiast’s heart flutter: a race tire so wide it couldn’t possibly fit under the fenders of any Ford product. Intrigued, one of them flagged down a Kar Kraft employee and asked what it was.

“It came off an Indy Car that wrecked,” he replied.

“Can we have it?” one of the boys asked.

“Sure, why not?” the man answered. “It’s just an old race tire.”

Several weeks later, according to Dave, the unwanted relic became quite valuable to the folks at Kar Kraft and their benefactors at Ford. On their next visit to Kar Kraft the employee the boys met earlier chased them down.

“Man, am I glad to see you,” he said. “My boss is going to fire me if I don’t get that tire back.” The boys looked at each other in amazement as he told them the tire came off the car Bobby Marshman crashed during a Ford-sponsored test at Phoenix. Marshman died in the accident and the tire was needed as an exhibit in a lawsuit. Before the day was out, that tire was back at Kar Kraft.

It was all too familiar a story. Racing accidents resulted in injury or death in those days and even teenage boys respected that. Dave and his buddies felt a responsibility to return Bobby Marshman’s tire because the loss of a promising young driver sickened them. It’s hard to believe today, but back then most real race fans averted their eyes when a car wrecked because they knew the driver could pay a high price, perhaps the ultimate price, for living their dream.

It’s not that way today. Crashes are now part of the marketing and promotion, much as carnival barkers used to entice passersby with tales of “death defying” feats under the Big Top. Death and serious injury have, thankfully, become so rare that even racing etiquette has changed. When I was young, drivers did everything they could within reason to avoid contact. No more. The gloves are off. Seemingly anything goes. But it was more than the safety of carbon fiber and the Hans Device that changed the face of racing.

Success ended racing’s revolution. Mainstream popularity brought escalating speed, cost and a legion of manufacturers, sponsors, tire companies and other interests that injected much needed cash into the sport. Teams that once won championships from sheds and garages with a single engineer and a handful of mechanics now employ hundreds in gargantuan chrome-and-glass technical centers with marble floors and atria lined with past winners. Success drove costs to the point where ticket sales and meager handouts from accessory companies and a bit of backdoor assistance can‘t sustain the sport — or the sportsman. That put the automakers and toothpaste companies in charge, and meeting their marketing objectives took precedence over sport.

Sanctioning bodies turned to closely controlled formulae and spec. racing as a way to keep peace, fill fields and, most importantly, get butts in seats. Now the cars are as similar to each other as the Indy Roadsters of the Fifties. The difference between one and the next is measured in milliseconds and passing is almost non-existent. The result is processional events only the most devoted purist can appreciate, and only then as a rolling example of the art of “strategy.”

Now that technical innovation is stifled and on-track competition is non-existent, gimmicks and carnival tricks are coming out of the woodwork. This season Formula One introduced a Drag Reduction System to spice up their events by not only making passing possible, but more predictable. Officials designate where and when the rear wing can flatten out to reduce drag and give the following driver’s car an aerodynamic boost. The hapless driver in front is not afforded the same advantage. It’s like making a thoroughbred lame in one leg for a short period so a slower horse can catch up; a legal version of baseball’s 1919 Black Sox Scandal in which the modern day Arnold Rothstein operates in full view.

It’s easy to think they have the magic formula. Bring on the boobs and bang-ups and watch gate receipts go through the roof. If that was all it took, the Indy Racing League’s flirtation with Gene Simmons’ marketing ideas would have succeeded, but it didn’t. In fact, it sunk deeper into the mire until the leadership of that series tepidly opened the door to cars that are the same but don’t look alike, and use engines from different car companies. It is racing’s version of Mr. Potato Head, a hybrid of the spec. car that supposedly places the emphasis on driver talent and individual initiative, and lets the best minds rise to the top through the creation of different body panels and use of different engines. It also was an admission that people wanted more than just a manufactured outcome.

Racing is at a crossroads, but there is hope on the horizon.

Audi and Peugeot’s foray into diesel power is technically interesting, and sports car racing seems to at least try to make their brand of the sport relevant, although manufacturer interests still rule the roost. Any grade school kid can tell you that a 3 Series BMW is no match for a Ferrari 458 Italia, but they run neck-and-neck on the track.

On the other hand, you have to give them credit for finding a place for the DeltaWing concept, the most radical idea since the 6-wheel Tyrell F-1 car, and a vehicle too advanced for the folks at Indy. Randy Bernard and his team backed away from it, partly in horror and partly because it was not yet proven. The car was a concept that had never run. No one knew if it could deliver on its promise. The thought of a 33-car grid of DeltaWing racers charging into Turn 1 at the 2012 500 was too much for them to bear. Tellingly, they chose to remain with Dallara for their “next generation” car, a car that brings them close where CART teams were just before the reconciliation with the IRL, but left no room for the radical DeltaWing to compete.

In spite of this, the DeltaWing seems to have a second chance. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) has made room for the car at Le Mans next year. I’m excited about the opportunity to see the DeltaWing prove itself on the track. I admit it’s a bit odd to see this single-seat concept jury-rigged to fit a sports car formula, but that’s part of its charm. It’s outrageous, unconventional and enticing in a way we haven’t seen in decades, and has the potential to run at competitive speeds on less than half the power of the leading prototypes. Next to it, the Audis and Peugeots may look like Stone Age relics.

I don’t envy sanctioning body executives faced with keeping their house of cards from falling down. Motorsport, like its stick-and-ball brethren, is more business than sport in the Twenty-First Century. Choose the wrong path or make a change at an inopportune moment and you’ll submarine your balance sheet in a heartbeat.

It’s difficult to understand the realities of managing a race series until you run one, and I don’t. Nor do I have tens of millions of dollars at stake. But I do know that racing won’t survive if it doesn’t attract a new generation of fans. Many feel today’s youth have abandoned the automobile for other technology. That may be true, but I believe a large slice of kids raised on computer racing games can make the transition to the real thing. After all, anyone that values their iPhone more than they value their life has the potential to be mesmerized by new concepts like the DeltaWing and other new ideas the same way Dave, I and the other kids in my neighborhood reacted to the work done in that mysterious brown brick building on Haggerty Street.

Willliam G. Sawyer is a former Marketing Director of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART).

[Napolis]

Originally Posted by Bill Sawyer

Since many of you have questioned the relevance of the Delta Wing I would like to provide my viewpoint. Below I have posted an article I wrote for TheVirtualDriver.com on the lack of innovation in racing. The Delta Wing is mentioned further down in the article.

I hesitate to post this for two reasons. First, TheVirtualDriver.com is owned by Chris Sawyer, my brother, a long time auto journalist. To avoid conflict I reprint it here rather than direct you to his site.

Also, I work for one of the principles in the Delta Wing project, although I have no inside information and I do not work on automotive or racing projects. All views expressed in this article are my own and, to a lesser extent, my brother's. I have his permission to reprint it here.

If the moderators feel there is a conflict in posting this, please remove it; but I feel it is relevant based on the comments about the DW in this thread.

Innovation and the Death of Innocence
Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:00AM
By William G. Sawyer

I saw two sure signs that racing is at a crossroads during a recent Formula One broadcast. One was the Drag Reduction System, a device designed to create artificial on-track action. The other was a promotional spot for the next race featuring cars twirling through the air, drivers cheating death and buxom pit babes as the sport’s main selling points.

Am I just old and unappreciative of this new direction or is the sport so desperate it will resort to any gimmick to put butts in seats? And if the latter is true, how did it happen? What turned the “Sport of the Seventies” into the “Marketing Exercise of the Twenty-First Century”? It made me think about what caused me to gravitate toward motorsport and away from stick-and-ball pastimes.

I grew up in the mid-Sixties when revolution was in the air. Sexual mores were under attack, young people rejected the conventions of their parents and the civil rights movement was in full swing. All belief systems were suspect and tenets that endured for centuries crumbled under our feet.

As a young teen growing up in Dearborn, Michigan, I witnessed two revolutions first-hand in a city dominated by racism and race cars. Dearborn’s mayor, Orville Hubbard, fought the civil rights movement in a futile attempt to keep the city segregated. His slogan, “Keep Dearborn Clean”, had a double meaning that fooled only the most naïve. Elsewhere in my hometown speed demons took their own slogan, “Win on Sunday", Sell on Monday," to heart and thumbed their noses at the AMA anti-racing ban they had agreed to only a couple of years before.

Ford’s all-out racing effort led to victory in towns like Indianapolis, Daytona Beach and Le Mans, and much of the development work was done a mile or so from our house in a mysterious brown brick building on Haggerty Street. This was Kar Kraft, a quasi-factory skunk works, and it wasn’t long before tales of the mechanical mayhem concocted there spread among the car crazy youth in the neighborhood.

We made regular trips to Kar Kraft’s Dearborn shop hoping to catch a glimpse of what went on inside. Anything was possible in our minds’ eye as the rate of technological advancement inracing during the mid-Sixties was mind-boggling. Engines moved behind the driver, tires grew wide and cars sprouted wings suspended three feet in the air on what looked like broomsticks. The neurons in my brain and those of countless other young people, exploded as we took in the technical revolution fomented by Ford, their cross town rivals at GM and cocky Europeans like Porsche. The endorphin rush turned us into lifetime racing junkies and no rehab unit in the country could undo the damage.

Every race seemed to bring a new innovation and records fell like trophies from a shelf during an earthquake. Occasionally these improvements found their way onto street cars in diluted form. Rumors swirled about upcoming street models that would bridge the gap between racing and the road. Some, like the Z-28 and Boss 302, slipped past the bean counters, others did not. Ford’s Mach 2, a mid-engined Mustang built from as many production parts as possible, is a case in point. It was too radical and narrowly focused in 1970, much as its Mustang I ancestor had been in 1962.

On one of my trips past Kar Kraft a stock-looking Mustang with a deep, throaty exhaust note rumbled past on a test run. I was intrigued by the odd way it sat on its suspension, so I followed until I caught up with it at a stop sign. I stared indisbelief. There was a V-8 engine sitting where a rear passenger would normally reside, visible to all under the sloped back glass. What I had stumbled upon was likely an engineering mule. And, though I looked for it again and again, I never caught even a glimpse of it. It, like the production plans, was gone.

Yet this is what took place in the 1960s and early 1970s. The unusual and impossible became commonplace. You never knew what was going to happen next, in all the definitions — good and bad — of that phrase.

One day my neighbor Dave recounted a tale of intrigue and adventure at Kar Kraft that made my spine tingle. He and a couple of buddies rode their bikes down the alley behind the skunk works hoping to get a glimpse at the latest Ford racing project through an open door. But it was behind the property where they discovered a treasure in a garbage barrel that would make any young racing enthusiast’s heart flutter: a race tire so wide it couldn’t possibly fit under the fenders of any Ford product. Intrigued, one of them flagged down a Kar Kraft employee and asked what it was.

“It came off an Indy Car that wrecked,” he replied.

“Can we have it?” one of the boys asked.

“Sure, why not?” the man answered. “It’s just an old race tire.”

Several weeks later, according to Dave, the unwanted relic became quite valuable to the folks at Kar Kraft and their benefactors at Ford. On their next visit to Kar Kraft the employee the boys met earlier chased them down.

“Man, am I glad to see you,” he said. “My boss is going to fire me if I don’t get that tire back.” The boys looked at each other in amazement as he told them the tire came off the car Bobby Marshman crashed during a Ford-sponsored test at Phoenix. Marshman died in the accident and the tire was needed as an exhibit in a lawsuit. Before the day was out, that tire was back at Kar Kraft.

It was all too familiar a story. Racing accidents resulted in injury or death in those days and even teenage boys respected that. Dave and his buddies felt a responsibility to return Bobby Marshman’s tire because the loss of a promising young driver sickened them. It’s hard to believe today, but back then most real race fans averted their eyes when a car wrecked because they knew the driver could pay a high price, perhaps the ultimate price, for living their dream.

It’s not that way today. Crashes are now part of the marketing and promotion, much as carnival barkers used to entice passersby with tales of “death defying” feats under the Big Top. Death and serious injury have, thankfully, become so rare that even racing etiquette has changed. When I was young, drivers did everything they could within reason to avoid contact. No more. The gloves are off. Seemingly anything goes. But it was more than the safety of carbon fiber and the Hans Device that changed the face of racing.

Success ended racing’s revolution. Mainstream popularity brought escalating speed, cost and a legion of manufacturers, sponsors, tire companies and other interests that injected much needed cash into the sport. Teams that once won championships from sheds and garages with a single engineer and a handful of mechanics now employ hundreds in gargantuan chrome-and-glass technical centers with marble floors and atria lined with past winners. Success drove costs to the point where ticket sales and meager handouts from accessory companies and a bit of backdoor assistance can‘t sustain the sport — or the sportsman. That put the automakers and toothpaste companies in charge, and meeting their marketing objectives took precedence over sport.

Sanctioning bodies turned to closely controlled formulae and spec. racing as a way to keep peace, fill fields and, most importantly, get butts in seats. Now the cars are as similar to each other as the Indy Roadsters of the Fifties. The difference between one and the next is measured in milliseconds and passing is almost non-existent. The result is processional events only the most devoted purist can appreciate, and only then as a rolling example of the art of “strategy.”

Now that technical innovation is stifled and on-track competition is non-existent, gimmicks and carnival tricks are coming out of the woodwork. This season Formula One introduced a Drag Reduction System to spice up their events by not only making passing possible, but more predictable. Officials designate where and when the rear wing can flatten out to reduce drag and give the following driver’s car an aerodynamic boost. The hapless driver in front is not afforded the same advantage. It’s like making a thoroughbred lame in one leg for a short period so a slower horse can catch up; a legal version of baseball’s 1919 Black Sox Scandal in which the modern day Arnold Rothstein operates in full view.

It’s easy to think they have the magic formula. Bring on the boobs and bang-ups and watch gate receipts go through the roof. If that was all it took, the Indy Racing League’s flirtation with Gene Simmons’ marketing ideas would have succeeded, but it didn’t. In fact, it sunk deeper into the mire until the leadership of that series tepidly opened the door to cars that are the same but don’t look alike, and use engines from different car companies. It is racing’s version of Mr. Potato Head, a hybrid of the spec. car that supposedly places the emphasis on driver talent and individual initiative, and lets the best minds rise to the top through the creation of different body panels and use of different engines. It also was an admission that people wanted more than just a manufactured outcome.

Racing is at a crossroads, but there is hope on the horizon.

Audi and Peugeot’s foray into diesel power is technically interesting, and sports car racing seems to at least try to make their brand of the sport relevant, although manufacturer interests still rule the roost. Any grade school kid can tell you that a 3 Series BMW is no match for a Ferrari 458 Italia, but they run neck-and-neck on the track.

On the other hand, you have to give them credit for finding a place for the DeltaWing concept, the most radical idea since the 6-wheel Tyrell F-1 car, and a vehicle too advanced for the folks at Indy. Randy Bernard and his team backed away from it, partly in horror and partly because it was not yet proven. The car was a concept that had never run. No one knew if it could deliver on its promise. The thought of a 33-car grid of DeltaWing racers charging into Turn 1 at the 2012 500 was too much for them to bear. Tellingly, they chose to remain with Dallara for their “next generation” car, a car that brings them close where CART teams were just before the reconciliation with the IRL, but left no room for the radical DeltaWing to compete.

In spite of this, the DeltaWing seems to have a second chance. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) has made room for the car at Le Mans next year. I’m excited about the opportunity to see the DeltaWing prove itself on the track. I admit it’s a bit odd to see this single-seat concept jury-rigged to fit a sports car formula, but that’s part of its charm. It’s outrageous, unconventional and enticing in a way we haven’t seen in decades, and has the potential to run at competitive speeds on less than half the power of the leading prototypes. Next to it, the Audis and Peugeots may look like Stone Age relics.

I don’t envy sanctioning body executives faced with keeping their house of cards from falling down. Motorsport, like its stick-and-ball brethren, is more business than sport in the Twenty-First Century. Choose the wrong path or make a change at an inopportune moment and you’ll submarine your balance sheet in a heartbeat.

It’s difficult to understand the realities of managing a race series until you run one, and I don’t. Nor do I have tens of millions of dollars at stake. But I do know that racing won’t survive if it doesn’t attract a new generation of fans. Many feel today’s youth have abandoned the automobile for other technology. That may be true, but I believe a large slice of kids raised on computer racing games can make the transition to the real thing. After all, anyone that values their iPhone more than they value their life has the potential to be mesmerized by new concepts like the DeltaWing and other new ideas the same way Dave, I and the other kids in my neighborhood reacted to the work done in that mysterious brown brick building on Haggerty Street.

Willliam G. Sawyer is a former Marketing Director of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART).

Bill

The DW was slow. It has no relevance to road cars. The 2014 LMP rules cut to the chase.

Build something that goes fast around a race course on little fuel.

What lap time do you think the DW would run at the Ring? KERS is the future. The DW isn't.

You think it will ever race again anywhere or that any manufacturer will ever use it's configuration/design raison d'etre on a road car?

I don't.

[Bill Sawyer]

Originally Posted by Napolis

Bill

The DW was slow. It has no relevance to road cars. The 2014 LMP rules cut to the chase.

Build something that goes fast around a race course on little fuel.

What lap time do you think the DW would run at the Ring? KERS is the future. The DW isn't.

You think it will ever race again anywhere or that any manufacturer will ever use it's configuration/design raison d'etre on a road car?

I don't.

The Ring is one race track and is, in its own way, an anachronism.

Back when Jim Hall debuted the high wing people questioned its value as well, but it helped usher in the aerodynamic age.

I readily admit that it was odd running the DW as a sports car, but I also think it created a great deal of interest in a sport that needs new fans to survive.

The ALMS has said they may run the DW later this year. Again, I have no inside knowledge.

We all have our opinions and I respect those who disagree with me. If we were all the same the world would be a very dull place.