Chevrolet is hoping the off-season aero-kit development permissions granted to Honda by IndyCar under Rule 9.3 will be the only time such rules are implemented, Racer reports.
Honda was granted permissions to develop its aero-kit in the off-season after Chevrolet pulled off a clean sweep of pole positions in 2015 and won 10 of 16 races. Chevy wasn’t overly happy with the decision, saying that allowing Honda to develop in the off season will take away from what implementing the aero kits set to achieve in the first place.
“I think some of the benefits that we did hope to get out of the aero kits were greatly diminished with the 9.3 rule,” said General Motors racing director Mark Kent.
“But we’ll go into 2016 and see what the results of that adjustment were in the hopes of being able to continue to beat the competition. We would not like to see another 9.3 adjustment – we think it was a one-off adjustment, and we hope that from this point forward it is pure competition.”
On a more positive note, Chevrolet said that they were able to achieve everything they’d hoped to with the implementation of the aero kits, which was to creative more visual differentiation between them and the competition and also prove their superior technological know-how.
“From the performance perspective the aero kit did everything we hoped it would do,” said Kent. “It allowed us to show our ability to develop a package that could out-perform that of the competition.”
“The other reason we did aero kits is because it created visual differentiation on the track, and if you looked at the kits this year, you could definitely tell ours from that of the competition,” he added. “So from those perspectives, we were very happy.”
Going forward, the automaker says it will work within the rules to improve its aero kit in the off-season and hopefully not be outclassed by Honda as they make major changes to their car for 2016.
“Within the rules there are opportunities to change the kits for 2016, and we’re focusing our energies on those three areas that we can change. We’re focusing very hard on those in the hope that even with the competition getting a reset, we can continue to remain ahead of them on the race track.”
Comment
They don’t want Honda to take their ball and go home so like NASCAR did with Toyota make changes in the rules. NASCAR cut back the HP and RPMs because the Toyota engines would not stay together at the previous HP and RPM levels. This gave them the Cup this year as the Ford and Chevy engines were designed to run at the higher HP and RPMs and were hurt by the new engine rules.