Delta Wing’s CEO Dan Partel says the unique single-seater is by no means dead. In fact, Partel is confident he will be able to strike a deal in the next month to build and test a Delta Wing prototype with a plan to race the car in 2013. In recent weeks Partel has had meetings with a number of European automobile manufacturers who have expressed interest in building 1.6 litre in-line four-cylinder ‘Global Racing Engines’ which are ideally suited to the Delta Wing.
“We are moving absolutely as fast as possible and I hope to have something concrete in three or four weeks time,” Partel told me this week. “If this comes together in the way we hope we will be looking for the very best talent in every category. We want people who are the best and the brightest. We want to get a prototype up and running in the next six months and then test and develop the car so it will be ready to race in 2013. And the beautiful thing about motor racing is there’s more than one sanctioning body out there.”
Partel is convinced the ‘Global Racing Engine’ concept will take off over the next few years with four or five manufacturers already looking at supplying different versions of the ‘GRE’ to different categories from touring and rally cars to single-seaters.
“Chevrolet, Ford, Mazda and BMW are up and running with their in-line fours,” Partel says. “The FIA regulations for the GRE will require the automobile manufacturers to sell or make available to the public the basic components of their engines within six months of entering competition. We believe we will be able to buy production engines that would require a dry sump lubrication kit and a few other bits and bobs for $15,000-$20,000. This whole thing has been well thought-out by the engine manufacturers working with the FIA and obviously they are going ahead with it.”
Partel says he’s sure the VW Group will also produce a ‘GRE’. “At the moment there are a lot of internal politics going on inside the VW Group so it’s difficult to say what’s going to happen, but I have no doubt that Volkswagen-Audi will be I-4 engine suppliers in the future.”
Meanwhile, IndyCar’s suddenly-embattled new CEO Randy Bernard has been told by most of his team owners that they cannot afford to buy and race the proposed new Dallara-Honda combination in 2012. Partel ridiculed last month’s ‘Iconic’ committee decision. “Now that the Chevy, Ford, Mazda and BMW in-line four engines are available,” Partel remarked, “I’m perplexed about how the ‘Iconic’ committee came to the conclusion that nobody wanted to supply an I-4 engine.”
Partel also offered a few words of advice to Bernard. “When you’re trying to develop or maintain a racing series you have to look at the key figure, which is return on investment for your teams. If your teams are financially healthy the whole series will be healthy. The return on investment has to be at least equal to the cost of operating a competitive team. That is the first target any series must set for itself. How do you create and build the proper media platform for your teams so that sponsors have confidence?
“To my thinking this has not been done by the IRL and I’m not sure they have the opportunity to do it because of budget constraints. In my opinion, the IRL are under spending, forcing Randy Bernard to do things that probably are not in the best interests of the series in an attempt to reduce the IRL’s deficit. That’s a tough assignment.”
Is it possible the Delta Wing will come to life while IndyCar’s 2012 Dallara-Honda formula will be delayed or stillborn? At this point it’s impossible to predict what the future holds for American open-wheel racing.
People have gotten way too hung on the looks of the delta wing, which admittedly is pretty retro-buck-rogers.
What makes it interesting is the engineering. NO WINGS, which cause most of the turbulence and make racing so difficult. Down force comes from ground effects at the rear. Open wheels are shrouded to prevent interlocked wheel launching (which will kill a whole bunch of spectators someday). Engine is NOT a structural member allowing very inexpensive engines, that only have to make the car go, not hold it together. Torque vectoring to assist steering when there’s not much front down force.
This all leads to very low drag, and a 230+ mph speed with just 300 hp. This is HUGELY innovative technology, worthy of USA’s technology leadership.
Meanwhile, putting a bull riding exec in to run the IRL was colossally stupid. He can manage a bunch of guys that have all been kicked in the head WAY too many times. Dont’ tell managing Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi is even in the same universe!
I am all for the delta wing to test. But the owners and financers should not be so hostile towards the IndyCar series for not choosing the delta wing… it is completely untested concept in a time where the series really can’t put much merit in untested concepts.
The idea that IndyCar owners cannot afford to purchase the new Dallaras in 2012, while they supposedly would have been fine with the Delta Wing, is a load of bull. The Dallara is only marginally more expensive than the Delta Wing would have been, the cost control seems pretty effective, the only difference is who they’re writing the checks to. Their complaint screams of political motivation, and after the mid-1990s I don’t think a single soul wants to go down that road again.
The GRE is all well and good, but does anybody really think that a 1.6-liter I4 would be able to compete with Honda’s 2.4-liter V6? Maybe the larger 2-liter model, with help. That would be just fine – it’d open up a lot of engine manufacturers to join the series.
DDT, the open wheels HAVE killed a bunch of spectators, which is why the tethering system was put in place over a decade ago. Since then, we’ve seen no issues. It’s called “open wheel” for a reason.
I still have no idea how in God’s name one can turn the Delta Wing in its current state, and seeing as IndyCar is adding more and more road/street courses to the schedule, that’s a problem. No, the computer simulations they’ve posted to YouTube do not answer this question for me. It seems physically impossible.
Bernard’s done a hell of a job in the past six months. The series may not be heading in the direction that many of the owners like, but dammit, at least it HAS a direction this time. Remember what happened the last time we let the owners try and run things?
Dallara’s concept won because they allow for the possibility of aerodynamic variation with strong caps in cost control. In another generation of cars, I can see the Delta Wing working out – it’s just not the right economic time, and as long as the car continues to look like a man’s genitals, I (as well as thousands of others) will never embrace it.
The Delta Wing has clearly polarized views about Indy Car. For me both Nascar and Indy Car are on a slow journey to the bottom. They are losing relevance in the sports and entertainment market for the younger generation. If one looks past the obvious external look of the Delta Wing and absorbs the technical interactivity that the Delta Wing presents to sponsors/manufacturers and fans one should be able to see that it presents a significant change in the way the sport can conduct its business of entertainment and excitement.
One thing about the Delta Wing that is not often mentioned is that it doesn’t have to look like the model we see above. There is a basic “cell”, like the Dallara, which can be built on in any number of ways. The Flash Gordon car on display is DeltaWing’s version…a buyer could chop and change as required and/or desired.
The Delta Wing is a brilliant piece of engineering that I hope gets built. Free thinking has been gone from motorsports for far too long, and the Delta Wing is a machine that could get people interested in racing again.
The entire racing world is heading towards a GRE solution, except Indycar and Nascar. Maybe Nascar never gets there but Indycar has no excuse not to. The Honda engine formula was a mistake and if not corrected will make Indycar even more of an irrelevant racing backwater then it already is. Forget the Delta wing it belongs in a video game not on the race track. Indycar would be better off letting teams run GP2/F3000 type cars then the current proposals.
Christopher Leone wrote:
“… Dallara’s concept won because they allow for the possibility of aerodynamic variation with strong caps in cost control. …”
I take some issue with that: To me it appears that what we have here isn’t so much anyone’s design but ICONIC’s cherry picked framework, commissioned to Dallara. The whole process seems to have turned upside down on itself. The participants to the chassis tender surely believed themselves to be working to a specific brief, with set freedoms and requirements. They must’ve believed their proposals were to be judged and selected as separate, self-contained entities and the merits therein. I can’t remember the sort of thing we’ve seen with IRL’s 2012 car happening in other creative contests I’ve known of, at all. Subsequently we have heard from Dennis Reinbold, for instance, that Dallara “…haven’t had much direction” and the IRL teams “… didn’t have enough information”. So has the whole idea in asking for designs for the 2012 car come full circle? Asking for direction and information yet again? Just what are the metrics we should discern progress in this … process?
On cost control: It will be very hard to break even by selling aero kits at $70k a pop – this was discussed at SpeedTV’s website a while ago – IRL needs big sponsors willing to underwrite aero costs as marketing for true variety of shapes to emerge. As I understand it, the current economics of the IRL lack that level of investment.
On Delta Wing: I’m sure it can support a variety of powertrains. Apart from the GRE which does appear to be a preferred platform for the largest OEMs, the shape, volume, and dynamics of the vehicle could also lend itself to an entirely electric solution. Perhaps such series could be run parallel, even with the same chassis swapping engines?
I think the Delta Wing is a stupid idea and while I am sure it all makes sense on a computer but there is no chance it will ever work on a race track.
Any car that is so much narrower at the front than it is at the rear is just going to cause accidents. Overtaking happens because one driver gets his nose level with the rear of the car in front the rest of his car can follow through the same gap.
With the Delta Wing however once the following driver has his front wheels level with the rear wheel of the car in front the leading driver can leave a gap the width on the front of the following car and there is no way the overtaking driver can go through the gap.
It is also going to be impossible for a driver to judge the width of the rear of his car. Normally a driver uses the front of his car to judge a gap. With the front of the car being so much narrower than the rear there are going to be accidents because drivers misjudge the size of the gap.
The Delta Wing is not an open wheel car. If you adopt it, you have some type of racing but not American Open Wheel. That alone is why long time followers of the sport will never accept it.