Acura to offer customer ALMS/ELMS package
"Certainly the two [2008-spec] P2 cars, if you had your checkbook with you, you could be going racing in Europe or over here. The Highcroft car is literally as it finished Laguna Seca last year. It’s virtually race prepped and ready to go. It’s available if somebody wants to go racing next year, and the same for the de Ferran car. They are both ready to go racing."
SPEEDtv.com reported in August that HPD was planning to lease their 3.4L LMP2 V8 engines for ALMS competition. However, as Griffiths details, they are now extending that offer to European teams as well.
“Yes. That is the intention. We’ve talked about it a lot and finally decided that yes, we could do it. We’ve basically said that we can support up to four engines running. By that, what we mean is that we could have four cars or four cars running, whether that be in a Lola chassis or a Courage chassis or in an Acura chassis. We could have two cars running in Europe, two cars running in the States, or any combination thereof. That’s what we’re prepared to support."
HPD is working on a Lola package for Acura engine as well, says Griffiths.
"We’ve had a lot of discussion with Lola already about the installation of the engine in the Coupe chassis. It’s not too difficult for us to do because obviously it ran in the original Fernandez car, the Lola open-topped car. Talking with Julian Sole over at Lola, it’s a very straightforward thing for us to put the engine in the back of that car if someone so desired."
Griffiths adds that this is not the typical deal, and comes with comprehensive support from a winning team.
“It’s not just an engine. It comes with the track support engineers. It could well be the guy that looked after Gil de Ferran’s car at [Laguna Seca] last weekend could be looking after the car running in Europe next year. It’s not just the engine, it’s the whole customer support package that comes with it."
Griffiths also stressed that HPD will only be offering lease programs.
“We don’t sell engines. There’s a lot of what we refer to as ‘I.P.’ within the engine, ‘intellectual property,’ and we would never let an engine outside our control. It’s a huge investment. It’s millions and millions of dollars that have been invested in these engines and we’re not about to give that up for someone to go and copy. The conversations we’ve had with the racing teams in Europe, and we have been approached by a few people, has been based around running the whole LMS calendar, including Le Mans, plus some testing. We’ve worked out a price for those guys based on a number of engine rebuilds and the track support that goes with it."
“We are probably a little more expensive than some of the other manufacturers that supply engines out there, but what we have is a race winning package. We’ve proven that. We were the only car out there that was able to beat the Porsche [RS Spyder]. Our view is that if you want to go out there and beat the Porsches, you need an Acura."