Nissan Deltawing Le Mans racer, the car that will make this year’s race a must watch, is finalizing its tests in America, and gearing up to come to Europe. Here it will do some more tests and then settle down for the start of the big event. The crazy-looking Deltawing is powered by a 300hp Nissan engine and will take part in 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours just for funsies.

The Deltawing project started out by Panoz, Gurney, DeltaWing designer Ben Bowlby and Highcroft Racing’s Duncan Dayton. Then Nissan joined and provided the engine, and here it is, ready to race. The car’s been though some rigorous testing recently at Sebring International Raceway and showed promising performance.

European test schedule will be announced later. Looking forward to see the car in action at the race. Not that we can miss it!

BEN BOWLBY – NISSAN DELTAWING CONCEPT ORIGINATOR

“There were a lot of lessons learned from our week in testing at Sebring. With the bumps, it is certainly very tough on every component and that was one of the attractions of testing there.

“We’ve been able to make some adjustments to the car and we will continue to do so right up to the green flag at Le Mans.

“Overall however, we are very pleased with the performance and the car confirmed our simulations that it does indeed turn and turns remarkably well.

“While this car has half as many components as a traditional LMP car, there are still more than 3,000 new parts that have never been bolted together before. The guys did a fantastic job last week and having access to the EMT facilities this week has been brilliant. We’ve made a great start and we’re all now very much looking forward to hitting the track in Europe.”

DON PANOZ – NISSAN DELTAWING MANAGING PARTNER

“The world-wide response to this car has been unbelievable. It is very rewarding to see that kind of attention paid because we are involved in this project because we think it is a game changer.

“It is what is needed in racing. We need to let go of the past and look forward to better fuel and tyre efficiency without sacrificing any performance.

“The fact the car is so different looking has attracted so much attention but the reason why it looks like it does is because that is what is needed to produce these kind of results.

“EMT has been involved in building a lot of cars in the past and we’ve been delighted to be involved in helping make some refinements this week using the lessons learned at Sebring.

“With any new car, there are always some things you need to update after you have done some initial miles and we now look forward to the next phase of development in Europe.”

DARREN COX, GENERAL MANAGER, NISSAN IN EUROPE

“This really is a rolling science project for Nissan. The timescales are extremely tight and we are learning every day and will do so all the way to the start of Le Mans 24 hours.

“At Sebring the basic concept exceeded our expectations, Nissan’s role now is to work on the reliability as we take more responsibility for the programme as it moves to Europe.

“The project continues on a very steep learning curve and this is motivating and exciting everyone on the project.”