MOORESVILLE, N.C. – After two days of weather-interrupted track time, the private manufacturers test of IndyCar’s 2.4-liter V-6 engine was completed Wednesday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
One team from Chevrolet and one team from Honda participated in the test of the new engine that will eventually including a hybrid-assist component when it begins competition in 2024.
Josef Newgarden drove the Chevrolet on Monday and Will Power took over for the remainder of the test. Six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon drove the Honda in the test session around a modified Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
“A big shout out to the inspiring Honda men and women at HPD back in California, where the Honda Indy car engine is designed, simulated, manufactured, assembled and dyno-tested,” said HPD President and Technical Director David Salters. “The engine ran well throughout the three days, and we completed all planned test items, thanks to Chip Ganassi racing and Scott Dixon.
“The car ran flawlessly with great collaboration and feedback, and we learned a lot. It’s great to get our new powerplant on track, we set ourselves these challenges to develop our people and technology here at HPD. Very proud of the amazing team at HPD and our Honda “challenging spirit”. It’s great to see all this hard work roaring round the legendary Indy track, very special and certainly emotional for all of us.”
The Honda internal combustion engine featured a different pitch and sound, than the current 2.2-liter, twin-turbo V-6.
“Props to the extremely well-informed fans out there in social media land who noticed a deeper gnarly tone from our new HPD IndyCar racing engine,” Salters said. “It is an entirely new design from HPD, and it certainly grabs your attention, not bad for a bio-fueled, super-efficient racing engine. Well done to those HPD racing magicians.”
The test was conducted in freezing, sometimes rainy conditions.
“We had a great test at Indy these past three days,” Salters said. “Despite the chilly temperatures our HPD racing engine is warm and ready for its hybrid friend to join the party.
“We can’t wait to integrate the hybrid technology, boost the powertrain performance and further enhance the great racing that is IndyCar.”
The weather was too cold to complete a full day of testing on Monday when Newgarden was driving the Chevrolet. But the two-time champion did get enough laps in to help Power when he took over car on Tuesday.
“It was a thrill to get to work with the Team Chevy engineering group and get to drive the new 2024 engine package,” Newgarden said. “It was a great collaborative effort to get the new engine on track to start testing for all the components needed in our Chevy — power, durability, and logging miles on the track. I always enjoy getting to work with everyone at Team Chevy and the cohesive unit we develop as partners with the same goals. For us, getting started early really emphasizes the importance of everything we are going to need in the future — durability, power, fuel mileage. These are the things we are always working on and I’m excited to see what the future is going to hold for Chevy in IndyCar.”
Power wrapped up the testing on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Today was a great step in getting the 2.4-liter engine package ready to go for the 2024 season,” Power said. “It was clear immediately that Chevy has put a lot of work into this already. It will obviously continue to get better and better. The Verizon 5G Chevy team did 150 laps, and I was impressed with the power of the engine throughout the day. I’m very excited about this addition to the series and can’t wait to continue to help develop it.”
Chevrolet lotted more than 600 miles over the three-day test.
“We’ve had a very successful and productive three days with the new Chevrolet 2.4L IndyCar engine,” said Rob Buckner, Chevrolet engineering manager, IndyCar. “This was a big milestone as we have progressed from initial concept of the 2.4L design a few years ago and running extensively on the dyno to installing the engine into a car and now the landmark event of turning our first laps at the Indianapolis Road Course.”
“We are incredibly appreciative of the all the men and women at Chevrolet Performance and our partners at Ilmor for their commitment to a highly successful on-track debut for the 2.4L engine platform. We could race this engine tomorrow, which is the highest praise possible for a new engine. Special thanks to Team Penske for quickly building a reliable and safe test car along with Josef Newgarden and Will Power for looking after our prototype engine with first-rate feedback.”
“We now turn our focus back to the Chevrolet 2.2L and a high workload of team testing ahead of the Long Beach Grand Prix next weekend. It is the most challenging time of the year for everyone involved in IndyCar and I’m looking forward to watching the Chevrolet Competition group and our race teams execute. All our goals for 2022 are right in front of us and we are ready.”