Acura Has “Mountain to Climb” as LMDh Testing Intensifies

Photo: Mike Levitt/IMSA

Acura is under “no illusion” of the challenges facing its LMDh program, with Honda Performance Development President David Salters stating they have a “mountain to climb” in the buildup to the car’s race debut in January’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.

The luxury automaker, which is one of four manufacturers that will campaign LMDh machinery in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP class next year, is running two Acura ARX-06 prototypes for the first time at this week’s IMSA-sanctioned LMDh test at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.

It comes after previous U.S. testing outings with a single LMDh car featuring a combined crew from Wayne Taylor Racing, Meyer Shank Racing as well as engineers and staff from Acura and technical partners HPD and ORECA.

“It’s lovely to see Acura’s commitment, so that’s great, and we’ve worked hard on it,” Salters told Sportscar365.

“Personally, speaking about development of the car, the powertrain, the electronics, the software, wow, we’ve got a mountain to climb.

“This is a brand-new car. I don’t think there is a single component that’s carried over [from the ARX-05]. Everything is new.

“Under normal circumstances that it a challenge. With supply chain issues and everything being a bit late, OK, more challenges.

“Then the first race is a nice, relaxing 24-hour race!

“We’ve got quite a bit to do. I’m under no illusion that we have a huge mountain to climb. And I think we’re a bit behind, to be honest. We’re not where we want to be.”

Salters said the reliability of the ORECA-chassied prototype, which is fitted with the LMDh-spec hybrid powertrain developed by Bosch, Williams Advanced Engineering and Xtrac, has been “improving” with further gains still to be made with the package.

He admitted that the ARX-06 is the most complicated race car to have been developed in conjunction with California-based HPD organization, which now employees more than 200 staff for various motorsports projects.

“I spent many years in Formula 1,” Salters said. “It’s not many miles away from [that] level of complexity.

“This is a real stretch for Acura, HPD. These are LMP1 cars basically. It’s a stretch but that’s the point.

“We’ve got to step up and it’s a big step.

“Your pain threshold adjusts. At the start with DPi, it was a lot but we mastered that. Now this is a lot, which is the point. This is what you need to use racing for and what racing is about.”

With both WTR and MSR now having its own cars, Salters expects further gains to be made with double the amount of information being gathered in advance of the car’s final homologation in the coming weeks.

“That’s the plan,” he said. “We are up against some extremely good, stiff competition. We need to share [amongst the our partner teams]. We’ve got two cars.

“We need to get everything we can out of two cars… We’re actually engineering a lot of the car. All of the powertrain, vehicle control systems, software, etc.

“We are in the middle. We did all of the installation with ORECA of the powertrain. We’re trying to help glue it together, which is hard.

“It is herding cats, in that there’s so much changing. But we need to share and use all of the might of MSR, WTR, ORECA, HPD to have the best thing when we go racing.

“The teams are working well together. MSR people have been with WTR; WTR people with MSR… We’ve just got to all work together on it. It’s as simple as that.”

HPD Taking “Hands Off” Approach on Driver Selection

Salters said he’s largely letting WTR and MSR select their own drivers for the GTP effort, unlike other manufacturers that have contracted drivers directly and allocated them to partner teams..

This is a slightly different approach to the Acura Team Penske days when both Ricky Taylor and Dane Cameron were contracted to the manufacturer.

Three of the four full-season Acura GTP drivers have been confirmed in Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque (WTR) and Tom Blomqvist (MSR), with WTR having announced on Monday that Louis Deletraz will be in its car for the Michelin Endurance Cup races and Brendon Hartley completing the lineup for the Rolex 24.

“From my point of view, the teams are best-placed [to make the decisions],” Salters said. “They race the cars, they have the very high skill in that area. I try to leave the teams to sort that out.

“I tend to do that with all of the series, really. They’re best qualified to make those decisions.

“At various times we have opinions. We have a driver-in-the-loop simulator. Drivers come through there and we can sometimes get a good insight on what’s going on and stuff.

“We’ll have opinions but it’s up to the teams.”

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