FUMES

March 28, 2012

Chevrolet power is back at the forefront of Indy car racing, but there's much more to the story.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 3/26, 7:00 p.m.) Detroit. The debut of Chevrolet's IndyCar racing engine - jointly developed by GM engineering and Ilmor Engineering - couldn't have gone smoother or been more impressive. But the 2.2-liter direct-injected, turbocharged V6 engine, which made its successful race-winning debut in the hands of Helio Castroneves and Team Penske at the St. Petersburg IndyCar race over the weekend (see this week's "The Line" - Ed.) is not just just another new racing engine, it also signals a seismic shift in the way GM is going to go about racing in the future.

This new Chevrolet racing V6 bristles with advanced direct-injection technology, most of which GM is keeping a very close lid on. GM's top engineering talent, especially those with extensive experience in the technology, worked long and hard to make the new IndyCar V6 fuel-efficient, powerful and competitive. Which, when all is said and done is the point of the transferal of technology from the race track to the street, isn't it? Lessons learned by GM engineers in the course of delivering a powerfully fuel-efficient racing engine will benefit all of the company's engines in the future.

GM is also making sure to cycle its top engineering talent through its racing programs now in an effort to get its best and brightest the kind of experience only racing can provide. Pioneered by Soichiro Honda, who used his company's top engineering talent to develop its racing machinery back in the early 60s and then cycled those individuals through its product development function, it has now become common practice throughout the industry. The urgency and immediacy of the decision-making process required at the race track just cannot be replicated in an engine lab or in a typical new car program timetable, and this performance "under fire" is something that GM's Mark Reuss, a knowledgeable racing devotee of the first order, values highly, which is why there's a new push going on within GM to embrace it. (This has been done informally for years on the Corvette Racing program, where the transference of ideas flows freely between the production car and racing engineering teams. This has yielded tremendous gains for both sides of the equation, and it did not go unnoticed by Reuss.) It's also the reason that all of GM's racing activities now report directly to Reuss instead of through marketing, which believe me is a monumental shift within the corporation.

Another change evident if you watched the race in St. Petersburg (a typical street race processional, by the way and not all that interesting, okay it was boring as hell), was the gold Chevy bow ties prominently displayed on all of the Chevy-powered entries. Under previous GM regimes Chevy-powered racing entries always sported a red bow tie. But those days, as they say, are long gone. The use of gold bow ties now strictly adheres to Chevrolet's branding efforts going on all over the world. But that's just the cosmetics. The gold bow tie also signals that going forward it will be Chevrolet Racing, and not "GM Racing." Stating the obvious it means that GM Racing really doesn't exist as an entity, but that Chevrolet Racing does (the same goes for Cadillac Racing as well). GM engineering will, of course, assign talent and resources for the tasks at hand, but it's Chevrolet Racing, not GM Racing which is again significant.

I have to credit Reuss for aggressively making GM's racing ventures pay off both in terms of the development of advanced racing technology that can eventually benefit its advanced production technology, and for developing its best and brightest engineering talent "under fire" in the competitive arena. It will pay off handsomely for GM over the long run. The company may have lagged behind other companies in utilizing its engineering resources up until this point, but I don't expect that will be the case for long, especially given the performance of its brand-new Indy V6.

Publisher's Note: As part of our continuing series celebrating the "Glory Days" of racing, we're proud to present another noteworthy image from the Ford Racing Archives. - PMD

(Courtesy of the Ford Racing Archives)
A shot of the Ford DOHC Indy V8 engine taken in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1964. Designed during Ford's "Total Performance" era, the advanced double overhead cam V8 was built with one goal in mind, and that was to win the Indianapolis 500. The great Jim Clark would deliver that win (with pit stops orchestrated by the Wood Brothers) in 1965. In its earliest form the engine was a 255 cu. in. normally aspirated V8 developing 376HP @ 7,200 RPM. In its final iteration (after its development had been taken over by A.J. Foyt) the engine had been reduced in size to 160 cu. in. and turbocharged to deliver 825HP+ @ 9,600 RPM.

Publisher's Note: Like these Ford racing photos? Check out www.fordimages.com. Be forewarned, however, because you won't be able to go there and not order something. - PMD

See another live episode of "Autoline After Hours" with hosts John McElroy, from Autoline Detroit, and Peter De Lorenzo, The Autoextremist, and guests this Thursday evening, at 7:00PM EDT at www.autolinedetroit.tv.

By the way, if you'd like to subscribe to the Autoline After Hours podcasts, click on the following links:

Subscribe via iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=311421319

Subscribe via RSS:

http://www.autolinedetroit.tv/podcasts/feeds/afterhours-audio.xml