Delta Wing: Future of IndyCar?

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Within the next few months, the public will finally know what the future of IndyCar will look like.

The sports leaders are looking at several different car concepts to race in 2012 and into the track's next century.

One of the contenders is radically different than the others. It is sleek and shapely like the rest, but it is also, frankly, strange.

It's called "Delta Wing.”

By now, many have seen the Delta Wing show car that is now touring the world, but the first version sits in a cardboard box in Ben Bowlby's trunk.

"So yeah, in here I actually have some of the pieces," explained Ben Bowlby, as he dug through a battered box to show the tiny prototype.

Bowlby is a racing engineer, who questioned whether the conventional, rectangular wheel set-up we've seen for a century is the only shape suitable for the Speedway.

Bowlby had a notion that what's essentially a rolling triangle might be able to turn hot laps, too. To test the theory, he went to a hobby shop at a mall, removed a wheel on a remote controlled car, centered the remaining front wheel, then gave it a whirl - driving it into high-speed turns.

It did not topple or tumble as one might expect. Instead it just went where Bowlby pointed it. Fast.

Mike Hall recalls his first look at the rolling triangle, "Ben, do that again," he said. "Show me how that thing turns."

Hall is one of the head honchos in the Target/Chip Ganassi IndyCar program.

The team encouraged Bowlby's idea and has backed its development.

In the Ganassi shop, engineers use everything from computer animations to racing simulation games to hi-tech material to refine Delta Wing. Recently the show car also took a spin in a wind tunnel, to test Bowlby's theories on a bigger scale.

"With the possibility of being able to break massively new ground in IndyCar racing, it's exciting," said Hall.

Backers of the project says their sport is at a critical moment - desperate for the innovation and excitement fans used to see each season at the Speedway.

"It's transitioned from the Marmon Wasp 1911, through the roadster era, the rear-engine revolution, turbines, engines, wings," said Bowlby. He contends the sport has stopped being innovative and that fans have fled the sport because of interesting changes.

Delta Wing's design team promises it can produce more exciting racing at a lighter weight, with lower horsepower and less fuel - while costing much less overall.

Those claims led to enormous pre-release buzz. Then, once the cover came off, the buzz threatened to go bust.

Reviews on blogs, message boards, and call-in shows were brutal. Most took issue with the car's appearance, others claim the car cannot possibly work.

Bowlby read many of the criticisms and says he understands, even if he doesn't agree.

For example, the show car does not have room for the wheels to turn. Critics seized on this as proof, one that the Bowlby now wishes the show car had the wider wheel wells a working model would.

"Everybody’s like "Hello? It doesn't steer from the front. It must steer from the rear. How can it work?" Obviously, it steers from the front.

And, it turns out the two tightly-spaced front wheels on Delta Wing are a nod to tradition, because no one would have accepted a single wheel in front.

Delta Wing is only most radical of several contenders to be the next IndyCar.

Others come from current IndyCar supplier Dallara, longtime Open Wheel manufacturer Lola, California-based Swift, and a safety-first entry from upstart B.A.T.

Traditionalists like the looks of the latter 4, largely because they echo and build on the great designs of years past. In fact, they prefer the looks of the very cars Bowlby has helped design his entire career but now considers outdated.

"So for example, the front wheels and the rear wheels being exposed at Indy account for 54% of the drag on the vehicle," he explains. "So if you can fair those wheels in, you lose half of the drag on the car. Instantly."

Another Delta Wing twist on tradition has more to do with its business model than its shape.

Bowlby does not want his upstart company to build the cars.

He'd leave that to others while the company encouraged and managed ongoing development by everyone and anyone from trophy-winning engineers to college kids.

Teams would buy whatever parts work better and go racing.

Whether Delta Wing stands a chance at outracing the rest of the concepts remains to be seen. But in one way, the project has already been a winner.

"There's been more verbal activity in the last 90 days, say, than in the last 9 years," says Ganassi Racing's Hall.

In that way, in a business where buzz equals bucks, Delta Wing may be a front-runner.