Following today’s news that Honda Performance Development will formally become Honda Racing Corporation USA (HRC US) in 2024, here are some snippets from a media Q&A ahead of the announcement.
The answers, from current HPD president David Salters and Koji Watanabe, the president of HRC Japan, provide some clarity on the future of Honda’s IndyCar commitments and the potential for an FIA WEC programme in the future with the ARX-06.
In the past when I’ve inquired about the Acura brand being taken to Le Mans to compete in the top class, we’ve often spoken in terms of the abilities here for HPD and its ability with some financial constraints to go and compete on an international level.
I’m not asking you to confirm future plans for the ARX-06 at Le Mans or in the FIA WEC, but could you at least provide an example of how this new structural change and greater linkage with HRC might make such things more possible?
David Salters:
“This is more or less exactly the point, we have a remit now to compete on a global stage and all join together. So obviously, we have to evaluate what makes business sense and competitive sense. If we’re gonna go racing, we need to be able to compete. But this new change of organisation certainly allows that to be more possible, for sure. And then we need to make sure it makes sense for our brands, and can we go and compete.”
Can you speak about HRC’s long-term commitment to IndyCar?
David Salters:
“It’s business as usual. So we are responsible for American North American motorsport. We have been very successful in IndyCar, we are very successful in IndyCar, we’ve got low-carbon fuels, and we’ve got hybrids coming. There’s a lot of optimism for the future.
“As always, we evaluate these things as we move forward. But right now, we’re pretty excited about IndyCar. The racing is thrilling. There’s some good technology coming through. We’re helping with that technology. There’s a lot to be optimistic about I think.”
How can HRC USA contribute to the 2026 Honda F1 engine programme? Obviously, you’ve got a great facility out there in Santa Clarita. Is there room possibly for expansion? So you can join forces with the guys in Japan? What’s the thinking behind that in future?
Koji Watanabe:
“We started our plans to re-enter Formula One starting in 2026. In particular, we’ve been working in development for Formula One for the engine side and the motor side.
“Right now we’re focusing on the development of both the engine and the motor to go forward.
“So, of course, at HRC, USA and HPD. There are many excellent engineers, many engineers with excellent abilities. And we’re looking at what areas that they can participate in, how those resources can help out with that development.
“And of course, I’m working with David on that project as well. There’s nothing concrete that we’ve decided yet. However, we’ll find out what areas we can focus on where our engineers can participate and using their resources to focus on both the engine and motor development for Formula 1.”
I know that there was a close collaboration with the development of the IMSA car this year with the Formula One team and HPD. So I’m wondering how important that was for the building of this relationship and whether you made the choice to go with the Formula 1 ECU, before you before you started the conversation to bring the two entities together.
David Salters:
“Obviously, the development of the ARX-06 sort of happened almost three years ago, conceptually, a couple of years to think it and make it and then start using it. So that’s how we got here.
“But the lovely thing is we have groups of people super smart, who naturally want to work together and exchange information. So that process has been ongoing, certainly, since I’ve been at HPD.
“So we already have a great working relationship. Honda’s a lovely company because it’s very respectful inside the company. It’s sort of quite unusual in this day and age. There’s a lot of mutual respect between people working, and that’s a cultural thing and it is quite delightful. And so we work together. We’ve been working together for years and years and years and years.
“And this was a natural evolution of that. I would say, this made more sense to make it more official, I would say so we’re sort of all those collaborations probably has got us to this point, I would think.”
Organisational change tends to come if you’re looking to take an opportunity or deal with a perceived problem. Can you give us an idea of the genesis of this particular announcement today?
David Salters:
“Watanabe, Sam, and I get on really well. And we had quite a quick conversation that it just made sense, to be really honest with you. So we started to look at how we do our racing. And we thought that just makes sense. So that was the genesis of it really, it just seemed like a very sensible decision to use the different skills of our different areas and put it together to go forward.
“Honda is a racing company. So we should try and perhaps formalise it a little bit more and make sense.
“Racing has two areas of sustainability, there is sustainability in terms of can we develop new technology? Lower carbon technology, low carbon fuels, electrification? That’s quite an exciting area at the moment.
“And then there’s sustainability in terms of how we need to manage our businesses as well. So we need to do things that make sense, economically and efficiently. And you really don’t want duplication.
“So how can we align our businesses for the benefit of Honda to be more efficient? That was the genesis of the discussion.”
David, you mentioned the WEC briefly. That is an area where the division within the Honda family has caused a slight complication, in terms of the presence of that brand in the WEC. Where does that lie in terms of your thought process going forward?
David Salters:
“I think we’ve always been pretty clear. We need to look at the WEC. We have an amazing, in my humble opinion, ARX-06, which has been the work of our team, ORECA have done a stunning job, and our race teams have done a stunning job. So we were smitten with our ARX-06.
“And of course, it’s eligible to go to WEC. But we have always said we need to evaluate what makes sense, it needs to make business sense, marketing sense, brand sense, and very importantly for me competitive sense, we need to be able to compete.
“We don’t go racing to not compete. So we constantly evaluate those things. There is a more formal setting to evaluate them now because we’re all looking at global motorsports, but the boundary conditions are still the same. We need to evaluate if that makes sense. And we’ll do that and do our due diligence and see what makes sense for our company and our people.”
A question about the timeframe for a potential evaluation for a WEC programme. Has that been outlined? Or is that still in the early stages at this point?
David Salters:
“It’s not been outlined. We sort of constantly work on that stuff. What makes sense? Where do we go in the future? So we’re constantly looking at our future strategies. We have no definite timescale at the moment, but we are evaluating it seriously.”
And would you rule out a programme in 2024? Is that something that’s too soon?
“We could rule out a programme in 2024 that’s too soon. Again, this needs to make sense. Also, you need to be competitive. And so we need to evaluate all those sorts of things.”
Featured image courtesy of HRC
