Curious how such a car would act in the corkscrew at Laguna Seca

Curious how such a car would act in the corkscrew at Laguna Seca

What the hell? Is Barnhart that reliant on Dallara kickbacks? I can understand why he'd oppose the Delta Wing, as it's some kind of CARTunioncommunist plot to unseat IMS from power, but Swift and Lola are in more or less the same position as Dallara.

Holy CRAPWAGON Batman !!

Come /on/ how the **** is that thing supposed to work on the tight street corners?!

Did they completely forget that IRL isn't 100% ovals? I... I have no idea what to say.

Indycar going for the land speed record!! Bizzare looking thing but i like to some imagination in designs. Initial impressions are it could work on an oval, but road courses?? Maybe it's just the shape, but it seems to be really long too.

I don't care what people say. It's awesome. If the Indianapolis 500 isn't about invoking the spirit of '50s futurism, I'd like to know what it does entail.

It looks like crap. The racing will have to be freaking spectacular to make me overlook that much ugliness.

It's evidently the shape. The Dallara has a 122 inch wheelbase and a 192 inch length; the Delta Wing a 125 wheelbase and, based on the proportions, probably similar length. It's also significantly lighter, which is a plus.

The notion that Ganassi, et al, would design a car incapable of racing on the current tracks strikes me as ridiculous. If you want to judge it on aesthetics, fine. But question the engineering? There's a reason Ganassi, Penske, and Andretti have several championships and we don't.

. . .but as far as I’m concerned, anyone that stands in the way of progress, or prefers to paint things as better than they are, is acting as an enabler to the IndyCar Series. IndyCar isn’t dying, but it is withering at an alarming rate thanks to some poor decision making and some rather shady practices of late. The manner by which the 2012 car has been handled is the latest cock-up to emerge.

The Delta Wings were the first to present a total concept to the League, but were met with skepticism from the outset. After a year’s work in the design and simulation of his 2012 car, Ben Bowlby was still branded as a lunatic by IndyCar for his radical new creation.

One of the top engineers in the IndyCar paddock with full knowledge of the situation called me on Friday to say, “Bowlby’s last Lola ChampCar was the easiest car to make go fast I’ve ever worked with. You could put it in the top-5 with half a brain. The thing was fast, reliable, and had a huge setup window. I don’t get why [IndyCar] have convinced themselves otherwise. Ben knows what he’s doing and has the history to back it up.”

The notion that Ganassi, et al, would design a car incapable of racing on the current tracks strikes me as ridiculous. If you want to judge it on aesthetics, fine. But question the engineering? There's a reason Ganassi, Penske, and Andretti have several championships and we don't.

Maybe you shouldn't say anything until you've seen the car negotiate said tight corner.

I’ve worked with Lola, Dallara and Swift, and they are all capable and distinguished manufacturers. From my perspective, I’d love to see four new 2012 cars from the aforementioned constructors, and believe each one would bring high levels of quality and creativity to a form of motorsport that sorely needs it.

It wasn’t so long ago when Dallara, GForce, and Riley & Scott shared the IRL marketplace, and they all peacefully co-existed. The three also won IRL titles, further proving that choice is good and shouldn’t be ignored with the next generation of designs. A spec chassis isn’t what we need. Four different chassis that meet a certain spec is where the League needs to go, and looking at how devastated the American open-wheel job market has been, multiple IndyCar constructors would pull a lot of talented people out of the unemployment line.

But where things spin out of control is when I see the League’s attempt to marginalize the group that created the blueprint for 2012, and then embrace those that have followed behind them.

As one veteran team owner said to me on Saturday, “It’s a dirty, dirty game of pool IndyCar is playing right now.”

Whether you like the cars or not, NASCAR was able to devise a plan to build and implement the Car of Tomorrow, and get it on track in a short amount of time. F1 threw out their old rule book and crafted a new car for 2009 that delivered incredible racing, and ChampCar did the same in 2007 with the Panoz DP01.

The precedent was set by three major series within the past few years to recognize a need for a new car, to act on that need, to carry it from the design phase to completion, and then go racing with those new cars in a very reasonable timeframe.

With the IndyCar Series, that precedent had been lost or forgotten. The current Dallara has become so old, it is just a few years away from being accepted in most vintage racing series.

(I’m not kidding on this one. The window for vintage eligibility is usually 10 years after the date of construction…by 2012, the current Dallara would be eligible to run at the Indy 500 and the Monterey Historics.)

So much time passed without action by the League, their entrants got fed up and fashioned a design of their own. Inaction by the organizers led to not just action by the paddock, but a newfound unity that hasn’t always existed.

If you look at the paddock as Labor and the League as Management, Labor feels their big idea was just copied by the men upstairs, and we should be thankful that the paddock hasn’t formed a Union, or they would likely be on strike at this moment.

For anyone that believes this IndyCar Labor and Management issue has something to do with vendettas, an old feud between CART and the IRL, or anything else tied to the past, it simply doesn’t. This is brand new.

The Car of 2012 rift is about today, not yesterday or yesteryear, and has nothing to do with The Split, Unification, IMS or Tony George. Within the past few months, the League has found an opportunity to create an open wound where one had not previously existed.

No matter where your loyalties reside – the League, the Delta Wings, Dallara, Lola, Swift, CART, ChampCar, USAC, AAA, or elsewhere – the only loyalty I can think of that matters is a dedication to the health and growth of IndyCar racing.

Once the League realizes that the road to prosperity begins with removing the wedge they’ve placed between themselves and the paddock, real forward progress can be made.
The Delta Wings tell me they will keep reaching out to the series in the hope that the League’s frosty reception will eventually thaw. We’ll soon learn how long they will continue to turn the other check.

The paddock wants to be a player in the 2012 solution, not a customer to whatever the League comes up with. If there’s one message to receive and remember, this is it.

Another point of distinction is that the Delta Wings want to provide a solution, not the solution. A lot more will be shared in their presentation at the Chicago Auto Show, but the IndyCar of Tomorrow they’ve been pitching for over a year now – what has become the 2012 car – has never been about becoming the sole supplier.

The Delta Wings have shown they are capable of producing their own car, and if the League treats them as anything less than a full partner in the 2012 process, putting this genie back in the bottle will be impossible. This group of wealthy and powerful team owners won’t simply wipe the Delta Wing project off their hard drives and sit idly by as they wait for IndyCar to tell them what cars to purchase for 2012.

The paddock wants a seat at the table – just like the F1 entrants did which resulted in the Concorde Agreement, and as the USAC entrants did which spawned Gurney’s White Paper. Whether you side with Labor or Management, history has shown us that if Labor doesn’t get what it wants, it tends to go elsewhere.

Unless the League has 20 cars and a whole new ownership base waiting in the wings, I’d recommend they pull out a chair and invite the Delta Wings to be seated.

I don't care what people say. It's awesome. If the Indianapolis 500 isn't about invoking the spirit of '50s futurism, I'd like to know what it does entail. Forget A1GP Cup of Nations crap, this is the first new idea in auto racing since NASCAR standardised the cars and kept them looking like different makes of sedan. I'd like to see it on the track though -- if it doesn't do what it's supposed to then it's obviously failed.

I thought we were in for something radical.

How about '10s futurism, or even '00s futurism? How about something we have never seen before, not something that brings to mind Batmobiles and the salt flats? I thought we were in for something radical. This car is a bizarre throwback more than anything.

More from Pruett's column:


Welcome to Indycar, Mr. Bernard.

So this ugly "car" is the beginning of a new split in AWOR? dear god.. not again.

Nearly three pages of commentary since the photos appeared. I'd say you can check the "radical" box.

The breakthrough was bringing the front wheels close to the center line of the chassis. This avoided the sports car look when shrouding the wheels for drag reduction and necessitated both the center of gravity and the center of aerodynamic pressure to be moved much more rearwards towards the widely spaced rear tires and away from the much narrower front track.

The biggest resistance for an Indy car is the drag of the exposed wheels and tires. At Indianapolis, 54 percent of the drag is the rotating wheels. By fairing the wheels there’s a huge gain in efficiency and a fantastic safety improvement from a contact standpoint.

The aero layout of the Delta Wing allows us to double the downforce by changing the height of the wicker on the top surface of the bodywork. And that can be achieved with $10 worth of aluminum

Today’s Indy car is an aerodynamic brick with a huge engine that spends its life burning fuel and components - it just shows how inefficient they are! That’s not surprising because for decades the regulations have mandated inefficiency as a way of controlling speed. Every significant efficiency improvement has been outlawed, whether it’s sliding skirts, active suspension or ground effects.

We propose to control the rate of fuel flow to the engine as the way to contain speed whilst maintaining efficiency – fuel flow will be our popoff valve or restrictor plate. It’s about who can get the most power to the crankshaft from the available fuel delivery rate, and I believe we can create a control device in a way that’s unlikely to be cheated. [...] With fuel flow control you don’t need to limit configuration or capacity or cylinders or turbos - you just have to get the most HP from the available fuel.

Personally, I don’t want to watch 33 spec cars at the Indy 500 and there are lots of people I’ve spoken to who agree, who want technical diversity and technical stories. Our intention is to provide a platform for sustainable development of the cars and exclude NO ONE who designs or makes quality racing car parts; Lola, Swift, Dallara, local suppliers, the auto industry and so on. This is America’s premier status single seater formula we are talking about, it needs to be remarkable!

... i mean i dont see any means for the front wheels to change direction ... anyone know how they plan to get it to turn. fck it nevermind, i don't care ....

If they select this, every third grade boy will be drawing it on his notebook. That's buzz!