Article by Marshall Pruett detailing the return of the Deltawing and, more important to this post, the development of a new twin turbo race engine and a rumored carbon fiber block.
(I thought it best to post this separate from the Deltawing thread that already exists as I am more interested in the engine development at this point. Apologies to the moderators if they disagree and would like to merge threads.)
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... chassis/P1
Based off of the 2.0-liter Mazda MZR engine found in the Van Diemen Elan USF2000 chassis, the new mill is slightly smaller at 1.9 liters, and adds both direct fuel-injection and a twin turbo system to double the 4-cylinder, twin-cam’s output.
Rated at 170hp in the USF2000 car, the DeltaWing unit, which replaces the 1.6-liter RML-designed Nissan engine that propelled the car in 2012, is currently achieving 345hp on the dyno, with 350 lf-ft. of torque at 6500rpms.
“We’re about 15 pounds lighter than the Nissan engine right now and two inches shorter than the stock Mazda,” Panoz continued. “This engine is being developed for P1 and P2; we’re doing a batch of 40 engines at the moment. We liked what we saw with the bottom end of the one Mazda engine, and the top end of another Mazda engine, so we’re putting them together with the new billet block.”
....
“It can make more power and we’re committed to making them a success,” he said. “They can be branded other things if a manufacturer wants to talk with us about that. And we have another version of this engine we’re working on, a second type you could say, that’s the ‘real’ P1 engine and has an innovative block with a new material we’re trying that’s 20 pounds lighter.”
That material, according to my sources, is carbon fiber. - Marshall Pruett