The ORECA-chassised Acura has been the standout car in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, although crashes have blunted its race results since scoring a 1-2 finish in the Daytona 24 Hours.
Built to LMDh regulations, it has regularly outpaced rivals Cadillac and Porsche that will race at this year’s centenary Le Mans 24 Hours in June.
But the situation is clouded by Acura being an American-only brand, and although the US-based Honda Performance Development concern has strong ties to its Japanese parent company, only Honda Motor Co can sign-off any international activity at F1, MotoGP or Le Mans level.
When asked if he was frustrated by not taking the ARX-06 to Le Mans this year, HPD president David Salters replied: “Yes and no. I think we’re quite ready. It [Le Mans] is a different animal, so we’d need to learn that. You never know where you’re going to be.
“Of course, we’d all love to go, who wouldn’t? But we’re here to look after the US so let’s do a reasonable job of that first. It’s what pays the bills! We’ve got to get to grips with these cars.
“We speak with our Honda Motor colleagues in Japan, they’re quite interested – they love what we are doing – but because it’s global, it’s out of our remit.
“So, it’s what works for Honda Motor, it’s got to be coherent, but it’s in discussion. It’s a big picture thing, it’s up to them to sort out.”
Salters says that the car’s strong showing at Daytona and Sebring – which makes up over half of the IMSA season’s race-running time – gives him confidence that the ARX-06 would be well suited to the arduous challenges of Le Mans.
“This car can do 24 hours, which is point number one for endurance racing,” he said. “And it’s not slow – we’ve made a good car, because we put a lot of effort into it.
“One of the things I’m most proud about that car is that it sailed through 24 hours at the first attempt. Brand new powertrain, chassis, electronics and hybrid system. As an engineer, that’s what gives me the most satisfaction. It wasn’t a case of touring around, and look at the first hour of Sebring, that was like a sprint race!
“You want to go and do well, we’ve built knowledge with this car, but who knows? We haven’t quite got that far. We need to do it at the right time, when we’re ready to do a good job for Honda or Acura. Part of me wants to go, but the engineer in me sees that we’ve still got a lot to do here.
“If we go, we do it properly.”
When asked if he envied Porsche Penske Motorsport, which runs two 963s in WEC along with a pair of cars in IMSA, Salters replied: “Right now, I don’t envy them. Hats off to them, they’re doing a good job because just getting the cars to the grid was not easy with the supply chain issues [that all teams suffered with the LMDh common components].
“Any new car is hard and these are like an LMP1 car underneath. It just doesn’t cost $100million any more. And they’re trying to make a fleet of them, which is quite hard.”
