Wirth extends Honda partnership to IndyCar and new sportscar programmes

Nick Wirth's organisation has already collaborated with Honda on the Acura/HPD LMP1 and LMP2 sportscar projects that achieved championship success in the American Le Mans Series.

Although that programme has now concluded, a statement from HPD and Wirth said that the firms were "evaluating several high profile new sportscar projects."

The major new development for the HPD/Wirth partnership is in the IndyCar Series, where teams racing with Honda engines when the championship introduces its new car next year will receive chassis development support from Wirth. Then when alternative aerodynamic kits are permitted from 2013, Wirth will design the Honda bodywork package.

"The results we have achieved together to date at the peak of international sportscar racing speak for themselves and underline the level we have achieved with our Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based aerodynamic technology and the other key elements of our unique all-digital development process," said Wirth.

"Now we have taken full advantage of the flexibility and efficiency offered by these ground-breaking technologies to ensure our hugely successful sportscar programme goes from strength-to-strength. Moreover we will be in a position to offer similar technical resources to the Honda IndyCar teams in 2012 and beyond."

HPD vice-president Steve Eriksen hopes the extension of the Wirth collaboration into IndyCar can be as successful as the sportscar programmes.

"We have total trust in Wirth Research's proven design, development and engineering expertise and are now looking forward to further success with jointly developed prototype contenders," he said.

"On top of this comes our new IndyCar project. With the advent of new multi-engine regulations plus plans to allow manufacturers to introduce their own bodywork packages, our special relationship with Wirth Research takes on additional impetus and importance in the next few years."