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Honda wants single-car IndyCar teams to collaborate

Honda is hoping to consolidate its stable of single-car teams as part of a plan to reclaim the IndyCar manufacturers' championship after being beaten by Chevrolet for three years running

Chevrolet secured the 2014 manufacturers' title with a couple of races to spare, however Honda was still able to salvage a major success from the season by winning the Indianapolis 500 with Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Honda's seven-team line-up in 2014 included four single-car outfits, while the only single-car squad in Chevrolet's four-team stable was Ed Carpenter Racing.

HPD vice president and COO Steve Eriksen said that a tighter group of partner teams in 2015 would allow Honda to use its race-weekend resources more effectively.

"There's no doubt there's benefits from being a multi-car team over single-car teams," he said.

"If you look at our situation this year, we have seven different entities we deal with. Chevrolet has four.

"In reality it's harder to spread resources across a number of single-car teams.

"It's always better if you have at least a two-car team. It's hard to divide people into pieces.

"There are some economies of scale that happen as teams expand into multiple-car teams.

"There's no question that's a benefit. To the extent we can encourage people to join together, that's going to be a benefit."

One possible opportunity will be CFH Racing, which will form during the winter out of a merger between Carpenter's Chevrolet-powered team and Honda-aligned SFHR.

No manufacturer partner has been announced for CFH yet, but Eriksen believes that it would be a good fit for Honda.

"You've got two teams there, each of which have had a very successful and good relationship with their engine suppliers," he said.

"Our approach in that kind of case is really to try to educate Ed about what makes us unique, what makes us different perhaps in our approach than Chevy.

"It's not that one's right or one's wrong. It's, does our flavour of how we approach things offer any appeal to Ed, who is used to only one direction in a competitive era?

"Ed knows us from the time we supplied the whole field. In the competition field, it's very different.

"Our approach is really to say, 'this is what makes us unique, this is why we think it's an advantage.

"We hope you'll think it's an advantage as well and come join us'."

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