Photograph Courtesy Honda
Is this the end of Honda Performance Development as we know it? Well, sort of.
Starting with the 2024 motorsports season, HPD will fall under the Honda Racing Corporation umbrella with a new name: Honda Racing Corporation USA.
“Our goal is to increase the HRC brand and sustain the success of our racing activities and we believe that uniting Honda motorsports globally as one racing organization will help achieve that,” said Koji Watanabe, the president of HRC Japan. “Our race engineers in the U.S. and Japan will be stronger together and I am so happy to welcome our U.S. associates to the HRC team."
Honda also notes that HRC US will be important in the development of Honda’s motorsport activities around the world, including its Formula 1 program.
Look for HRC US to make its motorsports debut at the 2024 Rolex 24 with the Acura ARX-06 prototypes–this time, however, sporting the HRC logo
Early this week, I was on a call with those involved. I asked how this would impact our world–meaning club and touring car activities.
David Salters, president of HPD, noted that his group has the “privilege” of racing the brand’s road cars, which was a bit new to him as he came from the world of F1. He listed Honda’s latest, turn-key offerings aimed at TC, TCA, TCX and TCR.
We will continue to do that, he said.
I hope that also means an LM24 entry.
So is this just a new name and a bunch of marketing or is something meaningful changing?
In reply to red_stapler :
Good question. Reading over the press release again, I'm not sure how much will really change aside from the name and perhaps how HRC focuses its efforts.
Maybe it simplifies moving personnel between racing disciplines and sharing R&D? Like if they want to shift engineers between Indycar, F1, and IMSA.
Q&A with HPD and HRC presidents
Organisational change tends to come if you’re looking to take an opportunity or deal with a perceived problem. Can you give us an idea of the genesis of this particular announcement today?
David Salters:
“Watanabe, Sam, and I get on really well. And we had quite a quick conversation that it just made sense, to be really honest with you. So we started to look at how we do our racing. And we thought that just makes sense. So that was the genesis of it really, it just seemed like a very sensible decision to use the different skills of our different areas and put it together to go forward.
I wonder if there's any tangential relationship to the thing I heard about HRC, the bike people, getting rolled into the general motorsport thing (not USA in particular, I believe I heard it in the context of MotoGP).
Maybe HRC as the global banner, and regional HRCs, with less overall subdivision and an eye toward greater cross-pollination?
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