The Panoz DP09 (commonly known as the Superleague DP09) was the sole

spec The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) is a non-profit consortium that establishes and maintains standardized benchmarks and performance evaluation tools for new generations of computing systems. SPEC was founded in 1988 and i ...

open-wheel An open-wheel car is a car with the wheels outside the car's main body, and usually having only one seat. Open-wheel cars contrast with street cars, sports cars, stock cars, and touring cars, which have their wheels below the body or inside fend ...

race car used in the

Superleague Formula Superleague Formula was an Open wheel car, open wheel single seater Formula racing, motor racing formula, which started in 2008, at Donington Park in the United Kingdom. The league introduced team sponsorship by association football clubs. It u ...

series. It was produced by

Élan Motorsport Technologies Élan Motorsport Technologies is an American enterprise that serves as an umbrella company containing the race car engineering, development and manufacturing companies owned by American racing and automotive company conglomerate Panoz Motor Sports ...

Braselton, Georgia Braselton ( ) is a town in Jackson County, Georgia, Jackson, Barrow County, Georgia, Barrow, Gwinnett County, Georgia, Gwinnett, and Hall County, Georgia, Hall counties in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, approximately northeast o ...

, in the United States. Panoz and Èlan engineers developed the Panoz DP09 to be the exclusive chassis for the Superleague Formula series that began in 2008. The DP09 was based on the 2007

Panoz DP01 The Panoz DP01 is an open-wheel race car that was produced by Élan Motorsport Technologies at Braselton, Georgia, United States. It was developed for use in the 2007 Champ Car World Series season, replacing the aging de facto-spec Lola chassis ...

Champ Cars, while in 2009 the cars were updated to become the DP09B. Since the series' closure midway through

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

, DP09Bs have seen limited use in the

BOSS GP Series The BOSS GP Racing Series is a motor racing series in Europe. The category originated in 1995 as the BOSS Formula series and evolved into the EuroBOSS Series. BOSS is an acronym that stands for Big Open Single Seaters. History The BOSS serie ...

. The DP09 featured a 750-horsepower 4.2-liter V12 engine designed by Menard Competition Technologies. It also featured underbody aerodynamics, a Hewland six-speed

semi-automatic gearbox A semi-automatic transmission is a multiple-speed transmission where part of its operation is automated (typically the actuation of the clutch), but the driver's input is still required to launch the vehicle from a standstill and to manually chang ...

, and weighed about . The DP09 race cars also were sans

traction control A traction control system (TCS), is typically (but not necessarily) a secondary function of the electronic stability control (ESC) on production motor vehicles, designed to prevent loss of traction (i.e., wheelspin) of the driven road wheels. TCS ...

, launch control, and anti-stall technologies, making performance dependent on driver skill and the team setup.

References

DP09 Superleague Formula Open wheel racing cars 2000s cars {{modern-auto-stub