Trouble looming if Honda stays unhappy
The 2001 Detroit Grand Prix sanctioned by CART was the flashpoint for a political battle between the era's competing engine manufacturers that resulted in Honda announcing its withdrawal from the CART FedEx Championship Series just four months later.
Honda finished out its contract with CART in 2002 and subsequently joined the IRL-sanctioned IndyCar Series in 2003. It has raced there ever since, even supplying the full field with engines from 2006-11. But following the events that transpired prior to qualifying for this year's Indianapolis 500, Honda once again finds itself in the position of having trust issues with an Indy car sanctioning body.
Honda Performance Development is also currently evaluating whether it will extend its contract to continue participation in the IndyCar Series as an engine and aero kit supplier. Which is why this might be a good time to briefly revisit the events of 2001, to provide context for the company's current dilemma.
Engine development was much more open at the time, and Honda found a big increase in horsepower by refining the design of its plenum chamber. Every change Honda made to its plenum was approved in advance by CART. Sometime in early 2001, Toyota learned about this path of development when a Honda engineer switched camps, which happens quite often in the racing industry.
What happened next caused the problem. Toyota informed CART about what Honda was doing, and brought to the table a solution: a 3/4-inch spacer, fitted at the base of the series-issued popoff valve used to regulate turbocharger boost. The spacer negated what was reported as a 40 to 75 horsepower bump from Honda's legally modified plenum.
Couching it as a change made due to concerns about elevated speeds for an upcoming race at Michigan International Speedway, CART introduced the popoff valve spacer without any warning at the Detroit Grand Prix. Honda and Ford/Cosworth teams protested and boycotted a practice session but eventually relented and ran. A 1-2-4 finish in the race led by Team Penske's Helio Castroneves was sweet vindication for Honda, but the damage was done. Honda execs were livid.
From the perspective of Ford/Cosworth and Honda in their protest, it wasn't so much that a new component was mandated. It was the way it was conceived and implemented.
"In the eight years we've been in CART, I've never seen anything handled as poorly, and to do it in collusion with one of the engine suppliers causes us great concern," said American Honda vice president Tom Elliott. "It really does make us question why we're here. I seriously question the value of our long-term interest in CART."
Sure enough, in October at Laguna Seca Raceway, Elliott announced Honda's exit from the CART series at the end of 2002.
"We have lost our confidence and trust in CART," he said. "That is something that takes a long time to develop that can be erased very quickly."
Prior to 2001, Honda had no interest in participating in the IRL-sanctioned IndyCar Series. But the future of HPD was secured when Honda teamed with Ilmor Engineering to produce an IndyCar Series engine for 2003. By the end of 2005, Honda dominated the IndyCar Series to the extent that rivals Toyota, which also switched from CART to IRL in 2003, and Chevrolet withdrew.
If Honda needed IndyCar in 2003, just three years later, IndyCar needed Honda. And Honda came through in the clutch, supplying engines to the entire IndyCar Series field for six seasons from 2006-11.
Without competition, however, there is little satisfaction for a manufacturer, even if it can lay claim to powering the Indianapolis 500 winner and the series champion every year. When IndyCar changed to a new turbocharged V-6 formula in 2012, back came Chevrolet — ironically, as Ilmor's corporate partner this time around.
For the last three years, using a common Dallara chassis, engine competition in the series has been fierce but fair. Chevrolet won the bulk of the races, but Honda powered two of three Indy 500 winners and earned one driver's championship.
That brings us to the current issue. For 2015, the engine manufacturers' domain expanded to include aero kits for the basic Dallara safety cell. And the gap between the manufacturers started to widen. Chevrolet's cars, whether through superior engines or aerodynamics or just plain better teams and drivers, dominated the first part of the season.
Honda focused heavily on Indianapolis when it designed its aero kit and hoped to fight back during the month of May at the Speedway. But it never really got a fair chance. Three Chevrolet cars got upside down after crashing during practice, prompting IndyCar to mandate some minor changes to the Chevrolet aero kit and requiring all cars to qualify in race trim.
Honda agreed to the changes on safety grounds, but once again, the perception exists that the sanctioning body (IndyCar) worked in collusion with a competing manufacturer (Chevrolet) to fix a problem not of Honda's making.
It wasn't so much that a new specification was mandated. It was the way it was conceived and implemented.
"We think as much as technologically possible, we developed a vehicle that was better in just about every aspect from a stability standpoint than the DW12 that it replaced," said HPD president Art St. Cyr. "We put a lot of effort into making sure that our cars were as safe as possible. We feel that we were affected more than we expected to be affected by the rules change that happened.
"In some cases the issues that we had [at Indianapolis], we didn't think, from our perspective, that we needed to go to the extremes that were imposed on us," he added. "However, for the good of IndyCar, we didn't want to park the cars or do anything like that."
The perception that Honda has once again lost trust in Indy car racing's current sanctioning body is also very real. And that's potentially a very unhealthy thing for the IndyCar Series.
In addition to carrying IndyCar in terms of engine supply for six years, Honda has also done much of IndyCar's heavy marketing lifting over the past decade, including race sponsorships and print and television ad campaigns.
Sources familiar with the negotiations for Honda's renewal with the IndyCar Series say the process has dragged on for six months because IndyCar wants Honda to carry an even greater promotional load. Until recently, Honda was happy with the racing side of things, even if the competitive balance is currently tilted heavily toward Chevrolet teams.
Now the way the Indianapolis aero crisis was handled behind the scenes with Chevrolet in a manner reminiscent of the popoff valve spacer with CART and Toyota in 2001 has Honda questioning their confidence and trust in IndyCar.
Little things that take a long time to develop, that can be erased quickly.
IndyCar Series management has a tendency to be very selective about what part of the sport's past history they choose to study and understand. So I'm hoping the good folks running the show at 16th and Polco in Indianapolis learn a lesson about past mistakes.
IndyCar has a problem right now, because Honda has a problem with IndyCar. I don't have any idea how they're going to fix it. I do know that recognizing it and acknowledging it would be a good first step.
Honda didn't park its cars in Indianapolis. But there's a pretty good chance they might do that at the end of the season if IndyCar doesn't work on repairing what appears to be a very damaged relationship with arguably its most important corporate partner. John Oreovicz/ESPN