Honda “love IndyCar racing” but future remains unclear

Credit: Chris Owens

Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) USA president David Salters has reaffirmed the organisation’s love for IndyCar racing but, at least publicly, remains non-committal about the manufacturer’s long-term future in the series.

The Japanese brand has enjoyed a stellar season in IndyCar, winning 12 races so far in a 2025 season with only a single round of the 17-race calendar remaining. Piloting the No.10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, Álex Palou alone has eight race wins to his name.

“We love IndyCar,” Salters said in a press conference at the Milwaukee Mile on Sunday. “We’ve been here for 30 years, I believe, doing pretty well. Very well this year - thanks to all our men and women. We love IndyCar. We love the racing. 

“[But] we don’t talk about our private businesses. We look at where we’re going for the future. That’s a Honda thing - that’s who we deal with thing. We don’t really discuss our private business in public, to be honest with you.”

There is belief in the HRC camp that IndyCar is heading in a positive direction as a series. A new chassis and engine formula has been announced to be coming in 2028 and it was also recently revealed that new-for-2025 broadcast partners FOX have invested one-third into IndyCar’s parent company Penske Entertainment.

Salters and company recognise the positive growth trajectory. But whether this is enough for a long-term commitment from HRC remains to be seen.

“Firstly, a big thank you to FOX,” Salters said. “I think we’d all say they’re doing a stunning job. Hats off to them. Thank you. That looks like a great development from where we sit. I would say generally people perceive that as a really strong development. There’s real growth and momentum in the sport. 

“Well done everybody. Well done IndyCar. Well done Penske Corporation. Well done FOX. Well done all the partners that are contributing. It’s lovely to see that and the growth. It’s brilliant. We’re in here racing. To see that is superb, isn’t it? We can all see really, really strong growth. We’re big fans of what FOX is doing. 

“We love IndyCar racing. We’re invested in IndyCar racing. To see it growing is brilliant.”

Credit: Joe Skibinski

Honda’s success in IndyCar in 2025 has brought them the Engine Manufacturer Championship crown with two rounds to spare - their first victory over Chevrolet since 2021.

Engine manufacturer points are handed to the top-two-finishing full-season entrants for each manufacturer in every race. There are also a smattering of bonus points on offer throughout the season, including double manufacturer points at the Indianapolis 500 and bonuses for race wins and pole positions.

“You have to understand how special this year has been,” said Kelvin Fu, vice president of HRC US. “We’re watching a massive effort from everybody at HRC US. Also with Álex in the No.10 car, it’s a generational talent. Just such a special season. 

“At the same time, you have to appreciate all the teams pulling together. Every one of our teams has scored manufacturers points for us. It’s all of us working together, trying to lift everybody up, come together. Just being able to sit here and represent 250 people… everybody cares so much about how we do, what we do.

“Even when we go back to headquarters in Torrance, everybody is just ecstatic. The fact that people are trying to sell cars, which is really what Honda is for, they’re incredibly impressed with what we’ve done and keep congratulating us as we walk around.”

Honda were beaten nine-to-eight by Chevy in terms of race wins in 2024, with the step forward for this year emphatic to oust IndyCar’s only other engine manufacturer, who could finish with as many as nine fewer wins than after next weekend’s Nashville finale.

“We weren’t happy where we were last year so we worked really, really hard over the winter,” Salters said. “It’s like a duck: it looks really calm on top; there’s lots of flapping underneath. That’s what happens here. 

“There’s this ferocious amount of work that happens from people who are hugely motivated to succeed. There’s not one thing but there’s a collection of things. It’s a sum of parts.” 

Credit: Paul Hurley

Reliability was one thing that set Honda back in previous seasons, with engine issues prompting unapproved engine changes and eliminating certain entries from manufacturer point-scoring eligibility. They won 12 times in 2023 but still fell short to their rivals at Chevy.

There have still been some issues this year - as is only natural across the course of a season - but Honda’s pure performance has toppled Chevy.

This has been the first full hybrid-powered season for IndyCar too - the system’s introduction coming in mid-2024 after collaborative support from both the Honda and Chevy camps. Salters admitted plenty of simulation goes on in the background at HRC to understand how hybrid deployment can be used most efficiently for the biggest lap-time gains.

In the view of the US branch’s president, it has been a successful first entirely hybrid-powered year, validating IndyCar’s long-time push for the modern technology.

“If you were to look at the amount of miles that the hybrid system has accumulated, it’s quite frankly astonishing,” Salters said. “For something that really is in the cutting edge of where it can just about fit and what we’re trying to do with it, the safety of the system… I would deem it as a big success personally. Also as an engineering accomplishment, what was achieved.

“We’re running 10s and 10s of cars. It’s a racing car; it’s at the limit of stresses and strains and temperatures and vibrations. To watch how it’s behaved, thanks to the efforts of IndyCar and [General Motors], ourselves, it should be applauded really. 

“The fact that it’s not talked about very much in terms of issues and things is testament to that, considering the amount of miles it’s running.”

Hybrid power will remain when IndyCar moves to its new chassis in 2028. Is that, coupled with the series’ continued growth under FOX’s guise and IndyCar’s ambitious plans, enough to keep Honda onboard? Only time will tell.