Nissan DeltaWing survives another frightening crash

Nissan’s revolutionary DeltaWing racecar posted its first ever race finish on Saturday (October 20), at the final round of the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), the ‘Petit Le Mans’ endurance race at Georgia’s Road Atlanta circuit.

The radical experimental racer, which has a conventional rear-end but a super-narrow front wheel track, placed fifth overall in the gruelling 1000-mile sportscar race – despite starting from the back of the 42-car grid following a horrific rollover during practice the previous Wednesday.

The DeltaWing’s campaign started badly when, after carving through a field of slower cars at the hands of Gunnar Jeannette, it was struck in the left rear by an errant Porsche 911 GTC-class car, flipping it onto its back and sending it through the dirt and into a concrete barrier.

It was the DeltaWing’s second serious shunt into a wall in as many outings, following a similar incident at France’s Le Mans 24-hour in June, when after six hours and 15 minutes of trouble-free running in its debut race, the high-tech open-top racer was slammed into a wall by ex-Formula One driver Kazuki Nakajima and his Toyota TS030 hybrid.

This time, despite severe bodywork damage sustained in the 7G impact, the DeltaWing team repaired the car and the car was back on track less than 24 hours later.

“From an engineering perspective, given that we were launched, the car stayed down, it did eventually turn over, but rather less dramatically than it looked in the in-car (camera) with the wide-angle lens,” said Nissan DeltaWing Designer, Ben Bowlby.

“In fact, the tub was undamaged in any significant way and, as you can see, 24 hours of work and the car is as good as new.”

Nissan said the safety of the DeltaWing, which it bills as one of the most unique racing cars to hit the track at such a high level in decades, was demonstrated in no uncertain terms by its second big crash in as many race events.

“What I am most pleased about is that while the car obviously passed all the virtual and actual FIA crash tests prior to running at Le Mans, we've unfortunately tested the car in real-world incidents twice now and in both cases the car has done its job in protecting the driver,” said spokesman Darren Cox.

“We'd rather not do it again but we've certainly shown the concept works and it is very safe.”

The unique arrow-shaped DeltaWing has half the weight, half the power and half the aerodynamic drag of a typical Le Mans sportscar.

After being sixth fastest in early practice, Gunnar lifted his race pace to climb from the 42nd place to eighth in the opening stints, before teammate Lucas Ordonez triple-stinted his way to third and Gunnar completed a quadruple stint without changing tyres.

While the DeltaWing placed fifth in its first race finish at the 10-hour Petit Le Mans event in front of 100,000 spectators, Nissan-powered teams employing a Nismo-tuned VK45DE V8 took first, second and third place in the ELMS LMP2 championship.

Watch the ‘Attacked in Atlanta’ video of the DeltaWing’s latest sickening shunt, which has already attracted more than 770,000 YouTube views, then see how Nissan repaired the car in the time-lapse video.

And keep an eye out for its next exciting appearance, in this weekend’s Japanese Super GT race.

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