,
What is the number one trick that makes the big wing doable on this small underpowered car? A DRS system! Yes, you hear it correctly, the APR GT1000 71″ wide two element wing with custom Blackbird Fabworx end plates is fitted with DRS.
Moti and company were a little secretive about the DRS system, but they did tell us that they had the wing CFD checked at various angles of attack to come up with the optimal DRS on and off positions.
The DRS actuators integrated nicely into the carbon-skinned hollowed out wing mounts. The secret units are the stepper motors or high pressure compressed air and pneumatic cylinders that power the wing are hidden in the truck area.
You can see some of the DRS actuator linkages here, but that is all we were allowed to photograph. We really like the cleanness of execution of the system.
The DRS system is controlled by this deadman button. When it is held down, the DRS system trims out the wing. When braking into a turn, the button is released that the wing returns to the high downforce configuration by default.
In early testing, the DRS system was good for six mph on Willow Spring's front straight and 3 mph down the front straight at Buttonwillow! When the car ran at the last Global Time Attack Superlap Battle for a shakedown, the DRS system was not yet installed and would have probably made a pretty big difference in lap time!
When the wing is in the low drag position it still makes 12% of its original downforce while shedding 60% of this overall drag.
So far, Morpheus has only publicly run as a coupe in testing. The coupe hard top is shown here. At Superlap Battle and the last GTA event, the car has run in speedster configuration.
In addition to the coupe top, a slick top speedster version of the car has been built. In speedster trim, a carbon cover fills in the passenger side of the cockpit and carbon fairings cover the dash and rear deck.
In speedster trim, the car has a lot less frontal area and a lot less drag. The roll cage tubes do make some turbulence and will be faired in sometime later. Creampuff had faired cage tubing.
We can't wait to see Morpheus in the planned final aero configuration of speedster trim, long tail, and rear diffuser!
Related
2 comments
What did they do with the other 1% of the weight? 52.5+46.5 only equals 99%
We lightened the car so much that we managed to get it under 100% weight, this car only had 99%!