By Andrew Cutler
April 6 2010

The radical - and controversial - Delta Wing concept car may not get the nod to be the IndyCar Series' 2012 spec chassis, but designer Ben Bowly and the folks at Ganassi Racing are still going ahead with it's development and testing. A full scale model of the car will get it's first wind tunnel test starting today.

The Delta Wing will be loaded into the Windshear wind tunnel, located in Concord, North Carolina. Featuring a 10.5 ft wide, 29.5 ft long conveyer track that can accelerate from a dead stop to 180mph in less than 60 seconds, Windshear is one of only three 'rolling road' wind tunnels in exsistance, and the only one that is available for commercial use. 

Ben Bowlby issued the following statement regarding the tests. "From the begining of the DeltaWing project, the design of the car has gone through hundreds of iterations. It is now time to put our full-size model into the wind tunnel to validate the extensive computer simulation work that we have done. The Windshear facility is one of the best tunnels in the world and we are confident that the data we collect on the performance of the DeltaWing will support our CFD findings.” 

The IRL has assembled an advisory panel, which includes Luczo Dragon co-owner & former Honda F1 advisor Gil de Ferran, to select the 2012 spec chassis from among the five prosepctive candidtates. Even if the Delta Wing is not chosen, I suspect that at least one of these unique cars will be built and tested, just to see what they are capable of in 'real world' conditions.