Nissan LMP1 Discussion

[Coach Ep]

What would be a good time - weather wise - to race at Fuji? Or does the mountain cause water chaos all year round?

[TF110]

True, theres no reason to advertise your non-racing race car. They still do social media stuff for the lmp1 though. You just have to follow them to know. Its nothing really news worthy but still talk on the team aspect. China's attendance has surprised me. It is the most populous country though.

[Mike E]

Originally Posted by Acid09

Nissan's treating Ben Bowlby as some sort of genius, has this guy ever build any race car in any class that was a competitive success? If not, what is the trust in this guy reasoned in?

He's done a bit.

Experience

• Chief Technology Officer
  
  DeltaWing LLC
  
  2010 – July 2011 (1 year)
• Technical Director
  
  Chip Ganassi Racing Teams Inc
  
  March 2003 – July 2011 (8 years 5 months)
  IndyCar, Grand Am, NASCAR & Advanced Engineering
• Chief Designer
  
  Lola Cars International Ltd
  
  September 1991 – June 2002 (10 years 10 months)
• Design Consultant
  
  GForce
  
  2002 – 2002 (less than a year)

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Yes. He did the final Lola Indy cars.

Along with some rather dominant F3000 cars, and works on other projects along side the impeccable genius of Newey.

[carbsmith]

Pretty easy to be a dominant F3000 car when you're the only F3000 car. Lola only beat Reynard once and that was before Bowlby even worked for them.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Pretty easy to be a dominant F3000 car when you're the only F3000 car. Lola only beat Reynard once and that was before Bowlby even worked for them.

Yeah but the DeltaWing dominated. Wait...

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Yeah but the DeltaWing dominated. Wait...

The Delta Wing may not be a dominant car, but it DID manage the performance claims that Bowlby stated - and as the GTR-LM Nismo has shown us, that's no small feat for such a radically different concept. If Nissan had continued to pump money into developing it instead of moving onto the ZEOD and it's junk electric drivetrain, there's every reason it could have been a race winner.

[Keycube]

Nissan LMP1 2015 is almost behind us; lots of words, lots of hype, lots of disappointment. I drank the Kool-Aid. Some of us still find the bitter taste appealing. We are legion (and masochists).

Now that we've established that the program consists of nothing but PR hacks, that Ben Bowlby is a buffoon, and the first iteration of the car exists only to mock the establishment and cause cancer and stuff, I wonder if there's a segment of folks that exclusively want to talk about the program going forward (as much as I hate that expression).

Yes, this is a bit troll-y, but perhaps it will be good to know that there is an outlet for questions/comments, hopefully with a "If you don't have anything nice to say..." umbrella over it.

I'm one of those corny sorts that think if all you have is speculation, may as well make it positive; else the negativity runs rampant and the whole thing becomes boorish.

So, enjoy. Or not.

[PorscheFanNo1]

Originally Posted by FormulaFox

The Delta Wing may not be a dominant car, but it DID manage the performance claims that Bowlby stated - and as the GTR-LM Nismo has shown us, that's no small feat for such a radically different concept. If Nissan had continued to pump money into developing it instead of moving onto the ZEOD and it's junk electric drivetrain, there's every reason it could have been a race winner.

A turd will always be a turd.

[Richard C]

I get what you are trying to do here. But... why have two thread for the same thing. And (not attacking you)... to expect to segregate "good" talk here and "bad" talk in the other thread... Good luck with that!

Richard

[Keycube]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

I get what you are trying to do here. But... why have two thread for the same thing. And (not attacking you)... to expect to segregate "good" talk here and "bad" talk in the other thread... Good luck with that!

Richard

Honestly man, I don't care if it gets used. Someone actually mentioned it a few months ago (perhaps on a lark), and I think I did it mainly for my own sanity. At least I can say I tried to be part of a solution to something that was driving me nuts.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Mike E

He's done a bit.

I am not trying to pile on here. (Why are we continuing to beat up on Bowlby at this point?)

But if we are talking about this, I look at that CV and IMHO, it talks to a career working at a "high" level within the sport, but generally (not always) without much competition against the resulting products.

What is unfortunate, is that the resulting cars he is well known for, do not have direct competition, so it's hard to evaluate their success or failure. The Deltawing is a unicorn that plays to it's own rules. That makes it unique and interesting, but not exactly special. The fact that it actually exists is the most interesting thing! The jury is still out on the concepts behind the Nissan LMP1. If they are able to make that work, then well deserved kudos to him!

Some here want to put him on a pedestal or make him some type of "poster boy" for how things should be done, but IMHO, he is missing the type of "win against the best" you get from others designers like John Barnard, Gordon Murray, Gary Anderson, Rory Byrne, Adrian Newey (I hate to put Newey on this list given we really have him "on a pedestal" above the rest at the moment). These people know competition and have come out on top.

Bowlby's positives are that he clearly has been successful in pushing unique ideas beyond just the drawing board. I expect there are many who would like to rock the boat with ideas such as the Deltawing or the Nissan LMP1, but are not able to do so. So he has a "Pied Piper" quality that is a positive and can't be denied. Few (at any level) are able to get someone to fund the type of unique projects he has.

Lastly... Its a relatively small group who rise to this level and are able to design these types of cars. In another life, I could fancy giving a go at design myself and would love to have the career he has had so far.

Richard

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Pretty easy to be a dominant F3000 car when you're the only F3000 car. Lola only beat Reynard once and that was before Bowlby even worked for them.

Something to be said for maintaining dominance.

[Artur]

Originally Posted by TF110

50,000+ people at Fuji and Shanghai doesnt seem like a lack of interest imo. That number would be a lot higher at Fuji if Nissan (and nice weather) were there.

Yup. I was very surprised to see how many people were present at those places given the poor weather. In China, for instance, there was quite a lot of real fans. It wasn't that kind of phony(paid by or put there by the Chinese authorities in order to make the local event looks better, as they also did in the Olympics) track attendance that we have seen in F1 since 2004.

FOX numbers in Nurb(the only post-LM shown on FS1) were the same as the Silv and Spa ones.

Originally Posted by MoMedic9019

Along with some rather dominant F3000 cars, and works on other projects along side the impeccable genius of Newey.

Don't know if you were sarcastic there, and eventhough I also don't like the undue hype that a lot of F1-related things gets, but, on this specific matter, I have to say the pedestal placement of Newey is entirely justified, imo.

The guy has been easily, head and shoulders, the best aero designer of F1 since the early 90s.

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

Some here want to put him on a pedestal or make him some type of "poster boy" for how things should be done, but IMHO, he is missing the type of "win against the best" you get from others designers like John Barnard, Gordon Murray, Gary Anderson, Rory Byrne, Adrian Newey (I hate to put Newey on this list given we really have him "on a pedestal" above the rest at the moment). These people know competition and have come out on top.

Newey is an aero genius. None of the others are even aerodynamicists, so you can't compare. The others are "just"(obvioulsy all very capable and successful professionals) regular general mechanical engineers that worked under the tittles like "chief designer" or "Technical Director" but weren't THE main responsible to how their racing cars looked.

[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by PorscheFanNo1

A turd will always be a turd.

A car that hits it's performance targets is most definitely NOT a turd.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by Artur

Newey is an aero genius. None of the others are even aerodynamicists, so you can't compare. The others are "just"(obvioulsy all very capable and successful professionals) regular general mechanical engineers that worked under the tittles like "chief designer" or "Technical Director" but weren't THE main responsible to how their racing cars looked.

It's slightly off topic... but better than discussing what is, or is not a "Turd".

I think much about top level racing (be if F1 or prototypes) has reached a place where it is hard for single individuals to really be responsible for the overall "goodness" of a design. To use an aerospace example... At first you had people like the Wright brothers who could understand everything about the total package, fast forward a few decades and it takes an army to design something like the Apollo space program. Apollo had so much going on that no single person could be an expert on everything. Lots and lots of specialization was required for the project as a whole

I try to not worship Newey as a god and tend to think he might be "slightly" but not much over rated (only because everyone elevates him to stratospheric heights). And I also don't downplay the others I mentioned above, or say they were not in the same league (even if Newey is might be at the top of the heap). Even then...Newey is primarily an aerodynamicists and relies upon other for various aspects of the car. F1 has historically recently been a game of aero, so his star has shown. He also likely has an organizational style that allows his overall team to succeed. Now... F1 is "mostly" become segmented by power units (Mercedes and everyone else). A primary reason Newey just walked away.

Anyhow... Newey is likely one of the last of that type of designer that can make a singular mark on the sport (I put Burt Rutan in that same box, but on the aerospace side). And while you can't count out the odd outlier genius, in the future I expect brilliance will come about via an army of specialists and what would make any team stand out is excellent organizational support. Col Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer with the Manhattan Project for example. In short, whoever is able to assemble and efficiently run the best team.

Richard

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

And while you can't count out the odd outlier genius, in the future I expect brilliance will come about via an army of specialists and what would make any team stand out is excellent organizational support. Col Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer with the Manhattan Project for example. In short, whoever is able to assemble and efficiently run the best team.

I think the future might have already happened.

[carbsmith]

Newey's track record across multiple teams is really too good to argue against. If Ross Brawn wasn't around he would have won everything in F1 for like 20 out of 25 straight seasons or something silly. There's a similar version of that statistic for Brawn too mind you.

In the period after International F3000 went Lola single make that they were still racing against Reynard in Formula Nippon under nearly F3000 rules Reynard won three championships to one by the way.

[Pole2Win]

Well... The only recent loophole Newey didn't take advantage of was the double-deck diffuser and that was (at least officially) because his team was one of those who received clear instructions from the FIA that such design was against the rules, but if that didn't happen he would certainly have incorporated the DDD into the Red Bull cars from the start, because the teams who didn't receive the recommendation (Brawn, Toyota, Williams) all regarded the DDD as the best design, and maybe Vettel would be a 5-time world champion nowadays.

Nevertheless, even without the DDD, Red Bull's car was so good that it could sometimes compete with and even beat cars equipped with the DDD, and all subsequent Red Bull cars until 2013 were evolutions of that car.

[TF110]

The double diffuser came from some honda/super aguri guys iirc. They went to Brawn (which took over Honda) and Toyota+Williams.

[gustavobamba]

http://www.endurance-info.com/fr/mic...ge-le-concept/

[joeb]

FYI, I merged the 2016 thread into the Nissan LMP1 thread.

[gustavobamba]

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/c...-this-project/

- 2 cars at Le Mans and WEC

- Hybrid from Renault F1 but just next year (2016)

[TF110]

Big info is "were not changing the concept". Fwd is here to stay and Im glad!

[TzeiTzei]

Nissan LMP1 & Renault F1... that has got to be a success.