Does anyone have info on this race car?

Looks the business.

 

belt-driven AWD with inboard brakes?

 

don't really know anything about the project but i did see the body buck and mold at a composite shop here in sf bay area a couple years ago... i don't know if any parts were made or not... it looked like it had been sitting for a while.

 

I think you found those images here -> http://dpcars.net/dp1test/de.htm

 

chain, not belt drive AWD (which makes more sense) with inboard brakes.

fascinating little car

 

http://www.palatov.com/cars/d1.html

 

How does this work? The driver certainly can't match the weight of the engine and trans so will he just try to make it work in corner balancing? Is it even possible with such a huge difference in weight distribution?

 

It doesn't, away from websites, sales brochures and in real life. Besides, there is no torsional rigidity with this narrow center box section.

430 bhp in an 80 inch wheelbase? Hmmm. That would potentially suck, be very difficult to drive and be hard to achieve the level of confidence in to really go quick.

From their sales info: "Despite similar performance (confirmed by driver-in-the-loop simulation on several tracks such as Laguna Seca), the D1 is only 1/10th the cost of the LMP2 racer, both in initial purchase and operational costs."

Sim comparison is easy, in real life is all that counts.

Christian Zugel in his RS Spider at Laguna Seca would smoke this thing...

 

A normal car is lopsided towards the driver's side. How is this different?

 

Magnitude.

 

Hello, true but they only turned left. How would a sports racer with offsetting weight to one side do on a SCCA track. Maybe the 4 wheel drive helps compensate or the small V8 is very light?

 

I just spent a few minutes on their website and basically it is a full space frame now, so torsional rigidity isn't an issue.

I see lots of short wheelbase go karts going pretty darn fast and they appear to be pretty driveable. Also,this thing has 4 wheel drive, so it isn't like the back end will be trying to consantly pass the front end.

I'm sure the RS would, but this is an "out of the box" solution, we don't have any comparative data to really evaluate it. Remember that in the CanAm days gokarts were turning lap times that would have put them in the middle of the CanAm grid. 250CC superkarts are, as you well know, wicked fast. I think that it's more a matter of development, how much and how much they can afford to spend to develop it that determines how fast it's going to be. Three things detemine lap time potential, power to weight ratio, downforce and drag. I think it could use some more downforce, and a longer wheelbase to support a bigger diffuser would help that, but the drag and power to weight ratio appear to be there. I doubt these guys have the money to really develop it, but it's an interesting concept that could be awfully fast if it was properlly developed with a real budget and a professional team doing it. Might not be successful, but it could be pretty darn fast.

 

Well, you could drive it yourself: http://www.palatov.com/downloads/d4rfactor.html

 

Hats off to Maher Solutions for this one!

 

Sure, it's an interesting concept, but he suggests on the website that based on simulated comparisons, this concept would be the equal of an existing LMP2 car "for 1/10th the price and running costs." They tout comparative data. Being familiar with contemporary LMP2 data, I question their conclusion... That's all.

 

The smaller-engined version (4-cyl bike motor vs. Hartley V8) has already lapped a few racecourses (Laguna, Portland) within a few seconds of their lap record for open wheel cars.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It4HlYVfZzA[/ame]
I don't pretend that my driving abilities would be able to extract 9/10s of the performance of one of these, but I'd sure like to give one a try

 

http://www.bac-mono.com/

An alternative perhaps? And street legal(ish)

 

I agree, that's a bit of an "over the top" claim, unless you can back it up with lap times...

It does look like they are currently running lap times close to the Formula Atlantic lap record for the track they are testing on. As we all know there are lap records and then there are lap records that are at a championship level and those are two different things. They could easily be comparing themselves to a pretty soft record. If they are running close to a good record that's pretty impressive.

I was looking at Road Atlanta lap records and the FA Championship Swift 016.a ran a 1:14.13 and Diaz won the pole in October with a 1:12.335, so a good LMP2 car is faster than the best Atlantics by a couple of seconds. Trackpedia quotes a typical lap for a FA car at 1:20+ The 250 shifter cars are running in the very low 1:20's too, which is a lot faster than I think I'd ever want to go in a kart..

I think these guys have a long way to go before they can claim they are as fast an an LMP2 car also. They are probably pretty fast, but when you get that fast it gets hard to whack off a lot of time. You don't just go out one weekend and the find three or four (or even 10) seconds a lap that they need to be able to back up that claim.

 

I don't have a ton of laps at Laguna Seca, but that video looks to be about 1:40 for a lap (albeit with some traffic) and I am pretty sure that is not near any serious prototype or open wheel record. The Viper ACR did 1:33 a couple of years ago.

Pretty sure fast protoypes and open wheel cars have to get under 1:20 to be fast.

 

Yes, the magnitude would be less in the side by side design.

 

Umm, our quicker vintage cars do between 1:22-1:29, so yeah. It would need to do a LOT better....