Racing this year at Le Mans 24hr as an experimental a whole new concept in race car
Its one seriously "out there" design, but very impressive when you see it go, with extreme light weight and only running a 1.6L 4 pot it's designed to keep close to pace with the faster cars but use less fuel and tyres reducing time in the pits
As some of the write ups have said you automatically think of the set up like a Robin reliant, this has most of the weight over the front wheel making it extremely unstable.
This wee beastie has most of its weight over the rear axle
One also imagines that the professional designers at Nissan the track testers etc etc etc might have considered all of the above .... If not they are probably kicking themselves and wishing they had asked "the real experts" on the sea breeze forum LMFAO!
Nail - Head DrJ
I love innovation, and the creativity which happens when they throw the race design rule book out.
At the end of the day it may be a POS but it's definitely interesting and may send others down some previously unexplored thought paths. Time will tell.
I thought it would be interesting them explaining to the race committee that the "Gap " was big enough to fit the nose in just forgot about the trainer wheels behind.
2 things;
1) Jay Leno is a knob jockey of the highest order.
2) Would not want to crash Morgan 3 wheeler hahaha.
As you were.
^^^^There's no oversteer there.
This glorious sounding prototype is a genuine oversteer monster.
(from their site)
Vehicle weight distribution is necessarily more rearward than traditionally seen with 72.5% of the mass between the wide track larger rear tires.
76% of the aerodynamic downforce acts on the rear of the car which has a lift to drag ratio of >5.0.
Rear wheel drive coupled with the rearward weight and aerodynamic distributions greatly enhances inline acceleration capability.
Unique amongst today's racing cars, more than 50% of the vehicle's braking force is generated behind the center of gravity giving a dynamically stable response.
Locking propensity of the un-laden front wheel at corner entry is greatly reduced due to virtually no lateral load transfer with the narrow front track/wide rear track layout, steered wheel "scrub drag" moment is virtually zero greatly increasing tire utilization and reducing mid turn understeer.
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It sounds more like a two wheel car, the front wheel just for minimum stability.
It's been done before, just not as extreme:
I wasimpressed by the videos , and realized that it had such skinny wheels at the front
so all the weight/drive at the back
light front end , skinny wheels, if they cut back to 1 wheel at the front and lay the wheel into the turn like a motor bike rather than keeping it vertical and fighting it , they could save even more weight.
it might start to look familiar too
You can only go so far with a light front end. You need two forces to get a car to corner. The lateral centrifugal force - dominates in the big sweeper - and could be done with the rear wheels if the C of G was also to the rear.
And some forces to get the car rotating in time with corner. That's the coupling to overcome the rotational inertia. This is most important to initiate a turn on tight corners and it's done by the front wheels. Some cars don't have enough traction available at the front and suffer what's called "initial understeer".
Gotta love a 24hr race
Qual 28th
Gearbox issues early on spending some time in the pits
Back out on track working way back up the field when they got slammed by a Toyota
1.08
Didn't really get slammed, more like a gentle nudge. Must have upset the airflow/weight balance or something because he had no steering after that.
