Category Archives: Racing

If you have two things with wheels, then you just gotta see which one is faster.

Satoshi Motoyama Tries to Get the Nissan Deltawing Back on Track

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The Nissan DeltaWing competed in this year’s 24 hours of Le Mans as the single experimental class showcase car. It took to the track after three and a half years of independent development. The DeltaWing had a universal unstoppable underdog appeal that quickly made it a fan favorite. Unfortunately it was taken out of the race by Kazuki Nakajimi in one of the Toyota TS030’s while he was challenging for the race lead. Nissan factory driver, Satoshi Mototayama, was at the helm when the DeltaWing was forced into a concrete wall. Le Mans rules allows the driver to get out of the car as long as he stays within a short distance of it. Motoyama tried for two hours to get the car back on track before giving up in tears with the fans all applauding his efforts. The damage to the drive train was too severe for him to get the car running again and back to the garage. That ends the DeltaWing’s story at Le Mans, but hopefully we’ll hear from it again.


Here is Motoyama’s interview with the press after the crash:

Sources: Nissan Europe and Nissan Newsroom

Top Fuel Honda S2000

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Yokohama did this interview with Hirano-san, the owner of the Top Fuel Honda Tuning Workshop in Japan, as a promotion for this year’s World Time Attack Challenge. Top Fuel was invited to bring their turbo S2000 that held the Tsukuba RWD time attack record for 3 years to compete this year. Hirano-san decided to completely rebuild the car to bring it to the WTAC. The video isn’t so much about the details of the car, but Hirano-san’s philosophy towards running his shop. He explains what the difference between a race car and a tuning car. It’s pretty interesting to hear what he believes to be proper etiquette for how tuning shops should interact with their customers. Top Fuel’s successful 28 year history shows that it’s working.


Source: Yokohama Advan on YouTube

Night Lap With The Audi E-Tron Quattro

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Ride along with Tom Kristensen as he pilots the Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro for a night time qualifying lap for this year’s 24 hours of Le Mans. Two things of note: first is how crazy fast he’s going. Imagine having to concentrate hard enough to maintain that pace for hours at a time. Second, you can clearly hear the electric motors wind down the front wheel speed in the heavy braking zones. That energy is then stored by spinning up a magnetic flywheel that sits in the passenger seart. It’s the same system that Porsche has been running in their 911 GT3 RS Hybrid endurance car with a couple of upgrades. The flywheel housing is now carbon fiber to save weight. The housing’s job is to hold a vacuum so the flywheels can spin without air resistance which would have been significant at 40,000 rpm. The car in the video qualified fourth overall, but the other E-Tron Quattro was the first ever hybrid to take pole at Le Mans.


Source: MT89MotorsportMedia via Autoblog

The Nissan DeltaWing Takes to the Track at Le Mans 2012

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Nissan Europe released this video to give a behind the scenes look at the development of the Nissan DeltaWing. The premise of the car is that it has half the weight and aerodynamic drag of a traditional race car and thus requires half the power and fuel consumption. The car’s center of gravity is very near the rear axle which is why the front tires are so skinny. The car was originally submitted for consideration to be the new chassis for Indy car racing but was passed over for something more traditional. New sponsors picked up the design to run as an exhibition vehicle in this year’s 24 hours of Le Mans. Nissan decided to back a large portion of the project by providing a 1.6 liter turbocharged I4 engine related to the one found in the Nissan Juke. After 3.5 years of development, the team and the car arrived at Le Mans and took their first shakedown laps.


Source: Nissan Europe