INDYCAR: High Anxiety Over 2012 Engine Supply

IndyCar

INDYCAR: High Anxiety Over 2012 Engine Supply

As the smaller IndyCar teams have found, access to the 2012 engine of their choice is not a guarantee. For others, getting an engine is proving to be impossible.

Marshall Pruett | Posted September 03, 2011

Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar pledged his company's commitment to build 2012 IndyCar engines, and their engine builder, John Judd, is on schedule, but teams can't get Lotus to the negotiating table. (IMS Photo)

“I can’t get them to return my call,” one IZOD IndyCar Series owner said. “Then, when I did get ahold of them, we had a conference call arranged and they never showed up. I’ve sent emails, left voicemails and they either don’t respond or take their sweet time getting back to me. Bottom line: I don’t have an engine deal yet.”

The current season of IndyCar racing has yet to finish, but that hasn’t stopped teams and engine manufacturers from jockeying for what relationships they feel will deliver the 2012 championship.

With brand-new spec Dallara cars and 2.2-liter turbocharged engines from three different manufacturers on tap for next season, teams—rich and poor—have been in the hunt for the for the most competitive engine partners.

Honda, General Motors--through its Chevrolet brand, and Lotus have committed to supply a maximum of 40 percent of the field with its product in 2012, but as some of the smaller teams have found, signing an engine contract is proving more elusive than finding victory lane.

Before delving into the growing powder keg between the far end of the paddock and the three manufacturers holding the keys to the future, it’s worth looking at the math involved before apportioning blame.

HPD's Erik Berkman, left, announces the signing of Chip Ganassi's team as Honda's anchor program for 2012. (

By my count, a minimum of 22 and 23 cars are expected to take the start of the St. Petersburg race that kicks off the 2012 season. That number could reach as high as 28 if some of the expansions from one-car teams come to fruition, one or two new teams appear and a few part-time teams step up to full-time programs.

Doing the math, at 40 percent, each of the three manufacturers would need to cover nine entries, if required. At 28 cars, that moves up to a maximum of 11 cars per manufacturer.

Of the teams SPEED.com knows have signed engine contracts—and many of them aren’t announced—Chevrolet has 10 engine leases filled, Honda has 7-8 at present and that number could be 10 in the next week or so.

With the maximum contractual obligation of approximately 9-11 engine leases, Chevrolet and Honda are essentially full, leaving possibly one single-car lease open if 28 cars show up at St. Pete and they feel the need to supply the full 40 percent maximum in the contract.

It’s worth noting that a minimum of 20 percent supply is also spelled out, allowing for one or more manufacturers to supply a small number of leases if one or more manufacturers want to flood the field with its product.

Making sense of the percentages and numbers, it would be fair to say Chevrolet and Honda have met the maximum figure, leaving Lotus to now step up and handle its share of the equation.

The growing discord at the far end of the paddock, however, is centered on teams’ desire to have an engine from one of the two coveted manufacturers. The downside in the somewhat open negotiation process established by INDYCAR has allowed the likes of Chevrolet and Honda to be very selective in choosing its partners for 2012 and beyond.

Simply put, with no provisions in place to ensure the bottom third of the grid had a fair shot at signing with Chevrolet and Honda, the two automotive titans have made the expected move of signing only the teams with winning pedigrees or a good chance of finishing in the top half of the championship.

Complicating matters even more, INDYCAR established an original date of September 1st for teams to declare which engine manufacturer they’d signed with. As each manufacturer will conduct private testing with its own chassis from October to December (teams receive their first chassis on December 15th), the September 1st deadline was meant to drive contract signings to allow teams to share in the advance testing activities.

The situation came to a head at Sonoma where, just days before the deadline, as many as four full-time entrants had yet to secure an engine contract and at least three part-time teams wanting to go full-time in 2012 were without engines.

With the order book full at Chevrolet and Honda, and Lotus not returning calls, e-mails or skipping meetings that had been planned, the owners approached the series to move the deadline to September 15th.

The grace period—just two weeks—provides a new window of opportunity for deals to be done, but as the situation is beginning to feel more like the ugly fight over increasing the Debt Ceiling than orderly business needing to be done between racing teams and engine providers.

Honda Performance Development boss Erik Berkman told SPEED.com that he understands the anxious times some team owners are experiencing, but with a tight budget to work from, playing the role of savior isn't an option.

“Let me say I think there’s going to be an uncomfortable period of time for any number of teams because I suppose you've got the teams that are saying, ‘I'm ready to buy, I’m ready to pay right now, tell me where to sign and I’ll sign.’ And Honda or let's say GM, Chevy are not yet saying, okay, we’ll sign you up. It's our understanding and belief that Lotus will show up, will answer the call. They may not find willing participants, who knows? We’re not aware of them signing anybody; there's no announcement. Who knows what they might have done and announced? We've been in constant and regular contact with a whole bunch of teams; whether it be by our initiation or by the teams’ initiation.

GM Racing's Mark Kent. (LAT)

“And I'm starting to sense a lot of frustration by teams because we just won’t sign up, we just won’t sign them. As you correctly understand, it's our intention to supply no more than our obligated, contracted amount of 40 percent. I'm not obligated to supply more than 40 percent of the field but now the size of the field as yet unknown. So if we assume -- whatever, we could be wrong on either side of that assumption -- but if we assume 25 [cars] that would be 10 [engine leases]. So that's where the 10 comes from and we've said it and I've read it coming out of [GM Racing boss] Mark Kent, so maybe we're working on the same assumption. Our 40 percent would be 10 out of 25, leaving five for Lotus. Now if the field size grows bigger we’ll have to then do some kind of assessment on what's the number.”

Kent and Berkman share the same outlook on the engine supply situation.

“I think our approach is we are trying to get our fair share of the field,” he told SPEED.com. “In doing so, we think we have alignments with our fair share of the field as we speak but the question has become, what is our fair share of the field, right? Because if you look at it, our fair share of the field is probably nine or 10 cars, I think we discussed this before and anything above that is an expense because we’re subsidizing every engine lease. So it's not in our financial plan to support an unlimited number of teams. So [we’re] trying focus on around nine or 10. There's a problem we ran into, dynamics you run into, once you start aligning with the teams that have more than one car, it doesn't take you long to fill up your field without going deep into the number of total teams, if you understand what I'm saying here. You get Penske with three, a couple others with two or three or whatever. You very quickly fill up your share.”

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