Since the first Indianapolis 500 was held in 1911, auto manufacturers have fought to earn bragging rights — marketing and promotional victories — through racing in IndyCar to help sell more cars and envelope their brands with reputations for speed, innovation, and excellence.
Pioneering safety devices and suspension systems, along with cutting-edge aerodynamics, are found throughout IndyCar’s 100-plus years of existence. But at its core, the heart of the cars, with everything from natural aspiration to supercharging to turbocharging to turbodiesels to turbines having been featured in the engine bays, is where the fiercest competition has taken place.
And after more than a century of choosing pistons and crankshafts as the preferred battleground, has the time come to shift the focus away from internal combustion engines (ICE) as the central combat tool?
With the global auto industry’s progressive move towards hybridization and electrification in mind, and the increasing value the industry is finding on electronics and vehicular efficiency, are we nearing a crossover point where IndyCar’s custom 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 formula, which costs a small annual fortune to support by Chevy and Honda, has run its course as something that can keep or attract manufacturers?
Simply put, as the automobile world is changing, is IndyCar’s ICE the thing that will continue to matter most to the car companies who participate in its series?
The question was raised by American Honda Motorsports Manager Chuck Schifsky in a wide-ranging conversation that included Honda’s call to action for IndyCar to make drastic reductions to the annual costs for the series’ engine suppliers to compete in the storied open-wheel championship.
Look to what’s coming in 2024 with the compact energy recovery systems (ERS), co-developed by IndyCar engine providers Chevy and Honda, that stacks a supercapacitor on top of a motor generator unit, as a guide to where greater promotional and technological interests could lie.
“I think there are several areas where you could save money,” Schifsky told RACER. “The biggest way that you could do that is to take a page out of the development of the hybrid system. So the hybrid system, once it’s up and developed and in the cars, and you’ve worked out all the bugs, and it debuts, the bulk of that development cost is finished. Everybody’s using the same part.
“You can’t mess with it. Teams can’t take it to their super-specialized dynos to trick out their supercapacitor packs or any of that. And so one could look at that and say that we should probably do the same thing with the ICE, where it’s a spec engine; everybody runs the same engine. Ilmor could build it.”
Honda’s suggestion for Ilmor Engineering to become the series’ sole ICE supplier, which is co-owned by IndyCar Series owner Roger Penske, which also builds Chevy’s IndyCar engines, is nothing less than remarkable.
Upon its creation in 1993, the California-based Honda Performance Development company was devised as American Honda’s competition division with one mission: To build and support its brand-new CART IndyCar Series engines.
Those engines, and many that followed in the Indy Racing League and its modern version as the NTT IndyCar Series, have won championships and Indy 500s ad nauseum, which makes the concept of Honda being willing to cease its IndyCar engine program in favor of using spec motors made by its fiercest rival a massive statement on where the brand sees value in the series’ future.
It’s also possible that HPD’s significant investment and involvement in IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with the Acura brand and the new-for-2023 hybrid Acura ARX-06 GTP car has provided newfound clarity on whether IndyCar’s longstanding engine manufacturer battles have been all but forgotten by open-wheel racing fans.
Attend an IMSA event, and its audience is filled with highly partisan crowds, many of whom proudly display their allegiance to the various manufacturers participating in GTP and its GT classes. The sight of fans flying flags for Acura, BMW, Chevy, Cadillac, Porsche and others is common. Car corrals filled with cars from those manufacturers and more like Hyundai and Lexus are also a deep part of IMSA’s culture.
In all but the rarest of cases, the average IndyCar event is free of Chevy and Honda flags being waved in the grandstands and there are no routine car corrals. Granted, IndyCar fans are extremely loyal to their favorite drivers and teams, but the days of gearheads arguing over which ICE has superior wastegates or greater direct-fuel-injection pressure are long gone.
“And what’s left is the software piece of it, which is a pretty big deal,” Schifsky said.
Writing software to control the various performance systems on today’s hybrid race cars is, despite its lack of sexiness, where brands like Acura/Honda and others find immense value. This is why herds of young and new engineers, many hired straight from universities, are being trained in GTP paddocks and F1 garages on the electronic management and tuning of the systems.
Look no further than Honda and Acura’s TV advertising as a sign of where the company ranks IndyCar’s comparative worth against its other racing programs. Its commercials in the U.S. have featured the Red Bull Formula 1 team and the promotion of its championship-winning hybrid engines used by Max Verstappen, not its championship- and Indy 500-winning IndyCar engines, and its hybrid GTP car is the obvious centerpiece of Acura’s motorsport-themed advertising.
The ERS side of hybridization is the key here. After trying and failing for the last 10 years to sign a third IndyCar engine manufacturer in order to reduce the financial and supply burden on Chevy and Honda, going the route of a spec ICE that both brands and more could acquire at a deep discount and badge as their own would seemingly solve, all at once, IndyCar’s high engine supply prices and its perennial inability to grow beyond two manufacturers.
With a spec motor made available, and a requirement for all manufacturers to commit sizable marketing budgets to their IndyCar participation, removing the enormous monetary outlay that goes with each brand building its own custom engines could be a double win for the series.
“And hopefully at that point we’d have three or four or five manufacturers,” Schifsky said. “Because now, just like some brands are coming into F1 to partner with teams and they’re not actually developing bespoke engines for them, instead of spending 60 or 70, or 100 million dollars on your engine program in IndyCar, you can spend a few million and gain access.”
It’s not a new path for IndyCar to consider, but it is the first time it has felt like a road worth seriously considering as the best decision for the series.
After CART collapsed and lost its engine manufacturers — including the exit of Honda, which split for the IRL – it reappeared the following year as Champ Car with spec turbocharged motors supplied by Cosworth. From 2003 through its final full season, and its one-off farewell at Long Beach in 2008, Champ Car had amazing racing but no manufacturer involvement, and quickly died.
On a similar timeline, the loss of Chevy and Toyota from the IRL — renamed as the IndyCar Series in 2005 — left Honda as its sole engine provider from 2006-2011. Honda’s single-supply idea is meant to prevent the mass exodus that gutted Champ Car and IndyCar, while making it much easier to afford for other car brands to play in the series.
Its naming of Ilmor as a potential supplier is also not without precedent as the company builds the spec 396 cubic-inch V8 used by NASCAR in the Craftsman Truck Series, which is based on a Chevy LS2 motor that carries badging from Chevy, Ford and Toyota in their respective models.
“It’s a scary one to think of, because we’re an engine company,” Schifsky said. “And all of a sudden, we’re not going to build our own engines. But you’ve got to look at what’s happening with IndyCar and what’s happening with NASCAR.
“All of the engine stuff has gotten so homogenized, I’m not sure any of the fans would know, if you took and put an engine on the floor and took the logos off of it, which engine belongs to which manufacturer. You couldn’t tell them from each other now, and I’m not sure any of the fans today would really notice if they weren’t different. Fans want good, close racing, lots of passes, and cars that sound cool.”
Representatives from Chevrolet are scheduled to speak with RACER about GM’s position on future IndyCar engine supply in the coming days.