IndyCar Delta Wing Concept: Now Racing Has My Attention

Posted on Jul 26, 2016 in Racing | 4 comments

IndyCar Delta Wing Concept

The next Indy car?


I’ve never been a big fan of car racing.


I love cars, I love power, and I love speed, so you might assume being a fan of auto racing would be a natural fit. But I don’t like it very much. I’m only remotely interested in looking at race cars if Danica Patrick is posing on one.


Something from the Chicago Auto Show captured my attention, though. The Delta Wing concept, pictured above, looks like a cross between an SR-71 and a land-speed world record chaser. And it could be the next car to hit the Indy Racing League.


Designed by a group of Indy execs, the Delta Wing concept weighs just over 1,000 pounds (including the driver), which is about half as much as the current IndyCar design. Plus, it has a 0.24 coefficient of drag. That is one slippery machine.


The combination allows the car to reach a top speed of 235 mph using a 300-hp, 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, instead of the 650-hp, 3.5-liter V8s currently in use.


Dan Partel, CEO of DeltaWing LLC, said,


Today marks a fundamental shift in how race fans and the general public will view all racing cars in the future; this is a game changer. This radical prototype takes open wheel racing to a new level from both an engineering standpoint and the overall spectator experience.


Now a racing league is speaking my language by developing an ultra-cool looking car that uses smaller, more efficient engines to produce staggering speed. This is a car I would be interested in seeing race.

4 comments

  1. randy

    “This radical prototype takes open wheel racing to a new level”

    Except it really isn’t an open wheel racer, is it?

  2. Rusty Pooler

    If I wanted to see an airplane. I would go to an air show. I feel car racing should resemble a car. I already think that the cars that they use are extremely unrealistic. However the technology developed does eventually make its way down to production vehicles at some time.
    Not a big fan of the delta wing. If that becomes the car the race, they will loose me as a fan.

  3. Peter

    This is an ugly-freaking POS. If Indy tried to push this POS on the fans, I would not think twice about leaving the sport altogether and focusing on the motorsports that heed the traditional open wheel, open cockpit design. This is just hideous.

  4. Will

    Indy racing is about how fast and agile a car can be. How the car looks should have nothing to do with at all. What looks cool and is technically brilliant is a vehicle that goes in excess of two hundred miles an hour with a motor the size of the motor in a tiny econo-box and not only that it can take turns at over 100 mph. It is called Indy car “racing” not the Indy Show Car Series. The thing looks like something out of a sci-fi novel, which people thought about the original Indy Car designs, so how is the delta wing any different? do not be afraid to shift your paradigm of what a car should look like. Doing so will most surely stop the advancement of the car’s capabilities.