By the early 2010s, endurance racing had become something of an arms race. Prototypes grew in power, sophistication, length and breadth, their sleek lines buried beneath aerodynamic addenda, their internals ever more convoluted.
Diesel Audis and Peugeots traded blows ahead of a field hindered by swelling budgets and tightening regulations. The direction of travel was clear; an all-encompassing escalation of power and complexity, bringing with it an increase in weight driven by the urge to remain competitive. Conceived as a rejection of motorsport’s growing excesses, the DeltaWing appeared the work of an aeronautical designer, not an automotive one.
A delta-wing aircraft has a triangular planform (similar in shape to the Greek letter ‘delta’, Δ) defined by long, swept leading edges and no distinct tailplane. As seen on Concorde, the Avro Vulcan and MiG-21 among others, it’s a concept aimed at reducing drag while maintaining high-speed stability. And just like Concorde, the DeltaWing was, above all, a design with pure efficiency at its very heart. The idea was to create a car that weighed half as much as its contemporaries, used half the fuel, generated half the drag, and required only half the power.
