INDYCAR: Manufacturers Split On Future Of Aero Kits

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Manufacturers Split On Future Of Aero Kits

We know IndyCar team owners don’t want aero kits next year, but what about Chevy and Honda, the two manufacturers who've green-lit kits for 2013?

Marshall Pruett | Posted June 06, 2012

INDYCAR provided manufacturers with the final aero kit rules last month, and has at least two takers, but will the series press forward with its plans or heed the call for another delay? (Photo: IndyCar Series)

IndyCar team owners are, as SPEED.com’s Robin Miller broke Tuesday morning, united against next year’s $75,000 aero kits for the purpose of cost savings.

For the owners, the kits represent an unnecessary expense—just as they did when they voted against the custom bodywork in May of 2011--and although they hold no authority to veto anything related to the parts or rules the series implements, they voted with their wallets, vowing to keep them closed.

Heeding to the needs of the paddock, the series reversed course and announced a one-year delay on aero kits, stating a planned implementation for 2013.

Now, 13 months after their first aero kit rejection, and with the significant budget overages related to the new Dallara DW12 package in mind, the owners are looking down the road and searching for ways to stay out of the red.

But what about the manufacturers who’ve allocated millions of dollars to design, develop and produce the aero kits? What do they think of this potential re-rejection of aero kits, the many ramifications involved and the message that it sends?

Chevy has opted to use its Bowtie logo to distinguish its cars, but physically, Chevy, Honda and Lotus-powered cars are indistinguishable. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

SPEED.com spoke with Chevy and Honda, the two IndyCar engine manufacturers who’ve formally committed to producing aero kits (multiple calls and emails to Lotus over the span of two days went unreturned), and like their views on turbo housings, it wasn’t a total surprise to learn they held differing opinions on whether aero kits should be brought to market, or scrapped altogether.

The first point of interest on the topic is how much progress Chevy and Honda have made on their respective aero kits--which would be homologated for two years if introduced, and whether halting those programs would represent a significant loss of time and money at this stage.

“As it seems to be with everything related to IndyCar, I can’t reveal a whole lot, but I can say we’ve submitted our [aero kit] entry fee and we’re planning to be a participant, but I really don’t want to let everyone know where we are on development,” said a cloak-and-dagger Chris Berube, Chevy’s IndyCar Program Manager. With a bit of prodding, Berube confirmed Chevy’s aero kit was indeed an active project.

If Berube was determined to remain tight-lipped on the status of Chevy’s aero kit project, he was more open to discussing the general concept, the cost justifications, the relevance to the cars GM has to offer, and whether aero kits fit the needs of the paddock.

“We can certainly re-balance our budget differently if we don’t have to do this,” he said of the potential cost-savings involved with abandoning aero kits. “It’s a level of aerodynamic development that’s typically beyond what’s done for passenger cars.

You’re talking rolling-road wind tunnels, which are only used for racing. That supersedes any resources we have internally, so that’s expensive. I personally think that [the series is] trying a little too hard to do [aero kits], but I think doing something to create a distinction [between the brands] is a good thing.

“Aerodynamics is such an important ‘knob’ for an IndyCar that you’re really driving lots of resource and time and money for what’s probably going to be marketed as a visual cue rather than an engineering cue. Giving that the gist of the series has been to be an affordable series, this is a move away from that.”

With significant cost overruns by Chevy and Honda in 2012 stemming from taking on former Lotus-powered teams, and the aforementioned budget overruns for teams with the new cars, Berube says he’s a fan of looking at more economical alternatives--a styling exercise of sorts—compared to full-blown aero kits.

“With the aero kits, you’re driving all kinds of development costs, then have the teams obligated, from a competitive standpoint, having to buy them. I’ve heard all the [anti-aero kit] feedback from the owners, and I’m not disagreeing with them. I think there’s something that could be done to achieve the same effect. I haven’t presented anything to (IndyCar CEO) Randy Bernard, but that’s my personal take on it coming into this late in the game.”

The open areas for aero kit manufacturers to develop and the volume of bodywork components included in the all-inclusive $75,000 price tag is fairly significant. (Photo: IndyCar Series)

At Honda Performance Development, the tone was noticeably different. Like Berube, Roger Griffiths, HPD’s Technical Director, confirmed the company and its partners at Wirth Research have started down the design path, and if it’s permitted, they’d like to keep going.

“We’ve always been behind aero kits,” said Griffiths. “We’ve always felt this is a good way to showcase the abilities of the manufacturers to design and develop racing cars. The bodywork, to some extent, is consumable, so one shape or another will be used. Bodywork gets damaged, and INDYCAR has done a good job at putting a price cap on them. I believe that they are potentially more expensive than if you were buying the straight Dallara bodywork, but what you would be getting is something that offers a lot more performance.”

Griffiths says he’s hear the anti-aero kit chatter, but his teams have yet to formally engage HPD on the subject.

“We’re not a part of the owner’s group, so we don’t hear exactly what’s said firsthand in those meetings, but we have not had any of our team owners come to us and state categorically that they do not want aero kits,” he said.

So, the owners would like to see the series shelve aero kits on the basis of budget control, Chevy wouldn’t argue with the change in order to lessen its cost exposure, and Honda is keen on seeing the series actually carry through with its stated plans.

“If INDYCAR is going to make a decision [against aero kits], it needs to happen very soon,” said Griffiths. “It would be disappointing to not have aero kits because this was part of the concept of the new car. [INDYCAR ICONIC committee member] Tony Purnell suggested it, it’s always been on the table and it’s already been postponed once. And if it gets postponed again, will it ever happen? That’s the worry. And then we’ll have what we have now for the foreseeable future.”

Looking at the team-side economics, three sets of aero kits per car, a $225,000 expenditure, is a safe estimation per year. How teams would choose to outfit their primary and backup cars varies; for the three cars owned by Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing, it’s likely the primary chassis would get two sets, and a third would go to one of its backups. For Ganassi Racing, which owns 10 Dallara DW12s, the order could be closer to 20 kits, bringing the bill to something in the $1.5 million range.

“Is it going to be a huge amount of money?”, Griffiths asked of the costs to the owners if aero kits come on-line. “It depends on how teams manage their inventory of bodywork going throughout the season, and obviously if you have a lot on the shelf and carry it through to 2013, it’s going to be a big hit, but if you don’t have a lot on the shelf, it might not be that bad.”

Page 1 of 2