Salters: HRC’s Increased GTP Role the “Next Natural Step”

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Honda Racing Corporation USA’s new race engineering role on one of its Acura ARX-06 cars in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship next year is the “next natural progression” as it ramps up to a full factory program according to company president David Salters.

The California-based U.S. motorsports arm for Acura and American Honda will be running one of the two Meyer Shank Racing-entered Acura GTP entries beginning next year, which will see HRC US staff in charge of race engineering, strategy and performance engineering.

It comes in addition to the company’s already high-level of integration with its partner teams on the engineering and development front, although this new addition will put HRC US front and center in the operation of a race car for the first time.

“I am in a very fortunate position,” Salters told Sportscar365. “We’ve got HRC, which is a racing/engineering company, and we’ve got lots of very smart people.

“We do a lot of the engineering behind the car. So this is the next natural step.

“But the the really nice thing for me is that our people, is what it’s all about, get the opportunity to take that next step to really be in the arena.

“It’s nice to take our company, which is our people, to the next step.

“It should speed our company up. There’s more urgency. When you’re on the pit stand, it’s different from being behind the pit stand, and it’s hard.

“For all our teams do, I have the amazing admiration for. I’ve been in a race team so I know.

“It’s the next step and challenge for our boys and girls. Because we do this to challenge ourselves.

“It’s pretty exciting and pretty daunting. It’s a good way of putting [us] out of our comfort zone. You live most when you’re out of your comfort zone.

“That’s the next challenge.”

Salters said they have promoted staff from within for the new positions, which have already been decided internally but not yet publicly announced.

He stressed that the HRC US-staffed entry, which will also feature MSR mechanics, is part of the team’s overall two-car GTP operation and not a standalone entry.

“It’s two cars in one team,” said Salters. “We don’t want two separate cars. It’s everything they need to do to race engineer the car, strategize it, but together [with MSR].

“The people we’ve had working in vehicle dynamics, all that sort of stuff, will get that next opportunity.

“That’s the nice bit. They get this next opportunity. It is from within.”

When asked if this change denotes a full factory team, Salters said “good catch.”

He added: “To the credit of WTRAndretti, we are all very integrated right now. But it’s the next step. The competition is pretty fierce out there and we’re playing against people where it’s not their first rodeo.

“How do we take the next step? You’ve got to evolve in this game. So it feels like the next natural step to even more integrate.

“It’s easy to talk about but hard to do. We’ll see see what the results will be.”

Salters said he expects to have HRC US staff based at MSR’s workshop in Ohio, where the team will fully prepare the car.

He admitted it’s a “nice bonus” for MSR to be located near American Honda’s research and development and production facilities in Ohio, including a brand-new state-of-the-art wind tunnel in Raymond, Ohio, at the Transportation Research Center proving grounds.

HRC US’s Increased Role “Good for Both Brands”

Honda and Acura Motorsports manager Chuck Schifsky said that HRC US’s larger team-based role will be good for the overall messaging points within the two companies, especially as HRC gains more global visibility for its four-wheeled racing exploits.

“There’s two brands at play,” explained Schifsky. “One is HRC, which existed as a motorcycle race company a couple of years ago.

“In Japan, they merged together the four-wheel racing side with the two-wheel racing side and that became HRC.

“The good news it that from the HRC branding standpoint, the two-wheel guys have been racing under the HRC banner for years and have been really successful.

“If anything, David and the four-wheel guys in Japan have to have a pretty big thing to live up to, but it’s great because that brand is already very well known.

“The HRC brand will become more important as time goes along. There’s some business plans that we haven’t yet sorted out that will be important for HRC to be its own standalone brand.

“The car will continue to race as an Acura ARX-06. That’s really important for the production car side because we use it to help sell cars.

“There’s nothing like having a successful sports car program to message and sell performance production cars.

“I think we’ve done a really good job with that, both ways, American Honda using the racing program to help it form a persuade buyers to look at Acuras and the Type-S models that we sell.

“Then the other way, using the rub-off of that racing from the HRC programs that have existed, even prior, even DPi and back to the NSX GT3 program when that started.

“I think it’s good for both brands.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John