Honda’s North American racing chief fears that the V6 twin-turbo powerplant for its 2023 Acura GTP sportscar “might be the last” all-new internal combustion engine it ever builds for racing ⬇️
Speaking ahead of the start of the new LMDh era of the IMSA SportsCar Championship, HPD president David Salters said his team had been given “a lot of freedom” and took “quite a lot of risk” in the 2.4-litre design, which is paired with the first electrical hybrid system in top-class American racing.
“Among the brief I gave our boys and girls, it was ‘let’s do the best we can because it may be the last one we put pen to paper on for real racing’ – it’ll be interesting to see what happens. “A very wise team owner once told me that two years is a very long time in motorsport, so it could all change, and the world is changing very quickly.Salters explained that the AR24e motor – which has been designed to work in unison with the LMDh common hybrid package of Bosch MGU, Williams battery and Xtrac gearbox – is a clean-sheet design for the new GTP class.“The easy thing would’ve been to lift the DPi engine and plonk it in the back of our LMDh, but that’s not why we do this,” he said.
“My head of simulation spent the Christmas holidays two years ago doing loads of simulation and came back with a 100-page report on January 2 to say: ‘This looks good!’