Debuting at the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2012 the Nissan DeltaWing had a bad career start after retiring in the 75th lap following an accident in which the DeltaWing ran into a concrete barrier at the Porsche Curves after being knocked off the circuit by Kazuki Nakajima’s Toyota TS030 Hybrid.
This short lived moment is soon to be disparaged after Nissan announced the car’s return to competition at the American Le Mans Series’ season finale which is the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta on October 17-20.
The crash was however a blessing in disguise for the techs behind its making as they managed to calculate enough data and found the car to have ran the targeted lap times, achieved the desired fuel consumption that is returning 10.7mpg and showed the expected tire wear where it would have gone 600 miles on a set of tires, compared to 300 miles from a conventional LMP2 racer.
The Petit Le Mans which uses the rules established for the 24 hours of Le Mans by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) covers a maximum of 1,000 miles or 1600km, approximately 394 laps or a maximum of ten hours.
