Honda Car Forum

Honda has dominated Indy Car racing since 2004, when it powered 14 of
16 race winners, swept the Indianapolis 500 and claimed the first three
spots in the drivers' championship. It only got worse for the competition
and, by 2006, there was no engine manufacturer left to try and challenge
the Big H.

So, Honda has been the lone engine competing in the Indy Racing League
for the past three seasons, but that's not what Honda Performance
Development is all about. It thrives on competition and, judging from the
recent engine manufacturers' summit at Indianapolis, somebody might join
HPD by 2011.

In a roundtable hosted by IndyCar officials, big hitters like Audi, BMW, Fiat,
Volkswagen, Mazda and Chevrolet came to Indy to explore the possibility
of joining the IndyCar Series.

Engine builders Cosworth, John Judd, Ilmor, Speedway Engines and AER
were also in attendance.

"We want to build open-wheel racing back up and we believe that bringing
other manufacturers into the IRL is necessary to strengthen it," said
Erik
Berkman, president of HPD, who led the Honda contingent attending the
event.

"We're competitive, yes, but on the other hand, we want to use our
competitive desire to build the series. We welcome competition. We want
competition. It's what drives us."

There were manufacturers from Formula One and sports cars and a few
familiar faces from open-wheel racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway
on June 24.

And the numbers were equaled by the clout.

"It was a very positive meeting, and we were happy with the quality and
quantity," said Brian Barnhart, who co-hosted the summit along with IRL
Commercial Division president Terry Angstadt.

"We were very well represented, with a dozen engine manufacturers and
race-shop engine builders in the room. It was a very positive meeting from
all aspects. It probably exceeded our expectations."

The F1 contingent was led by Fiat, which owns Ferrari, Alfa-Romeo and
Maserati, and BMW, recent winners of the Canadian Grand Prix.

Fiat's interest is believed to be in bringing its new Alfa-Romeo sports car
to
the United States, where Alfas haven't been sold for many years. BMW, of
course, has an active passenger-car market in America.

Audi, fresh off its third consecutive victory at Le Mans, currently competes
in the American Le Mans Series with its powerful turbo diesel.

The IRL has been a normally-aspirated series since 1997 but prior to that,
every Indy 500 winner since 1968 had been powered by a turbocharged
engine, which also dominated USAC in the 1970s and CART for three
decades.

Barnhart didn't rule out going back to turbos.

"The best positives associated with it are twofold," he said. "One
being that,
with the diversity of the schedule that we run, it [the turbocharged engine]
is a great power control and helps us adjust
power levels. If we need a little more power on
the street and road courses, we can certainly
adjust the boost up. If we need less power, we
can turn it down and control the boost level
from that standpoint.

"Also, you can't underestimate the second
positive, which is simply its sound. It's the natural muffler. With more road
and street courses, city streets, and venues of those types on the schedule,
it's nice to turn our adjustables down a little bit, and it's got a great sound
to it."

Honda dominated CART from 1996-2001 in the turbo era and, as Berkman
adds: "I think you'll be seeing turbos in production cars very soon."

Mazda, co-owned by Ford, has long been a regular competitor in lowerlevel
sports car racing in this country and supplies the engines used in the
Formula Atlantic series.

Volkswagen, a staunch supporter of Super Vees in the early 1970s, has no
active motorsports program at this time.

Ilmor, which scored a dominating win in the 1994 Indy 500 with Roger
Penske, helped Honda enter the IRL in 2003 and is still involved in engine
rebuilds today.

Cosworth, with a storied history in major open-wheel racing, is pretty much
in limbo since Champ Car closed its doors last winter.

AER is an English company that builds sports-car engines for the likes of
Rob Dyson, among others, while Judd had powerplants in CART during the
'80s and '90s, in addition to competing in other forms of motorsport.

The IRL will change engine and car specs for 2011, and Barnhart admitted
that the reality of a united series had a lot to do with the interest level.

"I honestly think the participation level was higher than anyone could
have
imagined or I would have anticipated," he
said. "And I would say it was clearly higher
than it would have been had it not been for
unification. It was so clear that the unification
and positive direction of open-wheel racing is
what triggered the high level of interest of
everybody that was in the room.

"What was most encouraging is that throughout the discussions, there
was
clearly more agreement than there was disagreement. And a lot of energy
for a follow-up meeting, and a lot of common ground."

Toyota and General Motors tucked their tails and ran after Honda spanked
them in the IRL, and Ford is on record as saying it prefers not to rejoin Indycar
racing as long as Honda is involved.

Berkman says whatever the IRL wants to do in 2011 is fine with HPD.

"We said we're willing to rewrite the rules if anybody thinks we've got
an
unfair advantage. We told them to write the rules and tell us what we need
to do. We'll play with one hand tied behind our back if that's what people
want."

The next engine forum should take place by early September. "The
encouraging thing is that all of them wanted to come back," noted IRL
founder Tony George. "We'll see how many are serious after that."

Honda is hoping for at least a couple of playmates because, as Berkman
points out, "the Racing Spirit is part of the culture at Honda and racing
is
an analogy for everything we do.

"We want competition and the more the merrier."