Honda Racing Corporation USA President David Salters directly addressed the sports car racing media today at Laguna Seca, just days after the company announced that it would pause its factory GTP programme in IMSA after the 2026 season.
“Like all things, we evaluate where we are regularly. It was time to evaluate where we are with GTP. And for a whole load of reasons, it was time to pause,” admitted the top man at HRC US.
‘Pause’ was the language that was chosen when Honda and Acura announced that they would not race in IMSA as a factory effort in 2027, instead, bringing the Acura brand to a more prominent role in the IndyCar Series as Honda has renewed its engine supply deal for the latter championship.
“What does ‘pause’ mean?” Salters asked. “We’ve got lots of other exciting things to look at and do. But we need to see what happens with the regulations for 2030.”
In his remarks, Salters expressed a hope that the 2030 regulations – for which, Honda is still actively a part of the discussions that will shape the next evolution of top-tier prototype regulations – will re-emphasise cost control.
He did so while tearing into the current trend of regular and frequent Evo “joker” updates for top-class prototypes across both IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship, a trend which has driven up the cost to participate.
“To be very straightforward, it will be very good if there is convergence, and it will be very good if there isn’t Evos. There’s no point having a series with the thing I’m not meant to talk about (Balance of Performance) and Evos; the two things are in opposition.
“You’ve got to control costs. It’s got to be sustainable. It’s not something that’s romantic and hopeful; it has to be sustainable for the future.”
Salters confirmed that the resources required to develop an Evo package – such as the one Acura introduced for the ARX-06 this year – could consume as much as 25 percent of a programme’s budget.
“There wasn’t meant to be Evos in LMDh at the very start. To be very blunt, we did not sign up for Evos,” he admitted. “All of a sudden, the cost is difficult, then it becomes more and more costly, and you have to start thinking about things.
“What was meant to happen – and DPi had this – is if you were in difficulty, it was there as a Joker to get parity, but not as an arms race thing. It’s become an arms race now. Every year, people are doing Evos. It was originally meant to be a tool to help in that scenario, but for whatever reason, it changed.
“Hats off to IMSA, there’s normally very good racing because of BoP and things. We’re here to entertain fans, with close, good racing, where the drivers should make the difference and the teams that run the cars make the difference. We need to keep that in mind.
“You have to make it sustainable economically. It’s not just the romance of racing, I run it as a business. You have a budget, you have to be within it, you have to have a certain return, and you have to entertain the fans. We’ve got to get all those things right.”
As it pertains to a privately-funded programme to keep the Acura ARX-06 on the IMSA grid in 2027, Salters said definitively that the chance was “zero.”
A privateer WEC programme for 2027, which had been rumoured as recently as January, was also ruled out.
But with the Asian Le Mans Series introducing a privateer Pro-Am Hypercar class for the 2026–27 season, Salters confirmed that he and HRC US are open to supporting potential privateers in the regional winter series.
Indeed, HRC US has been in talks with multiple interested teams who could bring the ARX-06 to Asia – and it could even keep the Acura badge if it races beyond Acura’s exclusive domain in North America.
That link-up potentially as soon as the 2026–27 season, the first for the Hypercar category, though the instability in Asia due to the US-Israel war on Iran may complicate plans for the upcoming season.
“We’re open to offers there,” Salters said of the prospects of racing in Asian Le Mans. “We love this car! It’s our car, with (chassis supplier) ORECA, it looks cool, sounds cool, that’s our engineering.
“We’re open to that, but it has to be fully funded. I can only imagine that happening in one place at the moment.”
While their departure, following those of Alpine, Lamborghini, and Porsche (from WEC) has led to worries that the highest level of prototype racing is in imminent peril of a crash, Salters feels hopeful that sports car racing at this level is in a good place, and will continue to be, even if Honda is not part of it for the short term.
“John (Doonan), IMSA have done a fantastic job, Pierre (Fillon), Thierry (Bouvet), the ACO – look what we all made! Let’s celebrate that.
“I sincerely hope our thing doesn’t reflect on the state of things, it’s just one of our decisions. We have to make decisions,” Salters lamented.
On any regrets that Salters may have had about not seeing the ARX-06 race at Le Mans like its fellow LMDh challengers from Porsche, Cadillac, and BMW, he continued: “You’re talking to the racing guy here – of course. I’ve also won the Indy 500, I’ve won Monaco, it would be nice to do the triple crown from a personal point of view.
“I think that car would be great (at Le Mans), but it would have to make sense from a business point of view, from a ‘what’s the return’ point of view, from an ‘are we learning’ point of view. We do this to develop our people and tech, and to do a good job for our fans. We need to go there knowing we can compete; we owe it to our fans to be in there fighting for it.
“So far they haven’t worked for us, but who knows for the future?”
Images © IMSA, Jack Webster / Dailysportscar.com
