Many of us laughed when we first saw the Deltawing racer and heard it’s going to compete at 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours. But here we are, only a few days away from the big race, and the Deltawing is ready to hang in there for a whole day. They’ve even convinced Nissan to provide them with engines. It’s only a 300hp 1.6 liter, but still. Th Deltawing successfully completes its pre-race test session at La Sarthe circuit, and is now counting the days for June 16/17 and the main event.
The only question now is, will it be able to work for 24 hours non-stop? Or will it break and fall to pieces. We really do hope it can finish the race with flying colors. It won’t be classified in any of the categories, but we want it to do good regardless.
For Nissan, the test represented the Company’s biggest commitment to the famous French endurance race to date. Nissan will power a quarter of the entire Le Mans 24 Hours field this year, with particular dominance in the LMP2 class, in which 13 out of 20 cars will use Nissan engines. The star of the show was the radical Nissan DeltaWing which aims to complete the legendary endurance race using half the fuel and half the number of tyres of its fellow Le Mans entrants. All of Nissan’s key cars performed admirably, with a top 20 place for 2011 LMP2 champion team, Greaves Motorsport, and a trouble-free day of running for the experimental Nissan DeltaWing.