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Honda could switch back to normally aspirated engines

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The Honda Racing Team have suggested it may be viable to revert to normally aspirated engines if TOCA apply any further restrictions on the turbocharged teams for the next round of the British Touring Car Championship at Brands Hatch.

Although Honda have already begun work on their 2012 challenger, a fully Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) specification car based on the new ninth generation Honda Civic, the team believe their current turbocharged Super 2000 contender has now been too heavily restricted, after being forced to carry an additional 20kg of weight at Rockingham, and already running at 1.5 bar of boost.

“There’s nobody else in the field with the same boost level as us,” Team Dynamics (Honda) Team Principal Steve Neal told TouringCarTimes.

“We’re at the lowest boost level that you can go to and they’re even suggesting they might go below what we’re at, and if they do that I’m actually in two minds of putting a normally aspirated engine in for Brands Hatch, because that way I get not only the 20 kilos they just put on, but I’d also get the 25 kilos for a normally aspirated car so I’d get 45 kilos off, I’d have the same power as I’ve got now and a better handling car.”

The team have suggested earlier in the season that they may switch back to the normally aspirated engine, but this was before the latest change in the cars’ weight, which now sees the Honda running at a base weight of 1190kg whilst the normally aspirated Chevrolet Cruzes of RML and Tech-Speed are now at 1145kg, before championship success ballast is applied.

At Rockingham, the two most experienced Chevrolet equipped drivers Jason Plato (RML) and Paul O’Neill (Tech-Speed) secured the front row on the grid, with Matt Neal the top placed Honda driver in fourth just under three-tenths of a second behind.

Though after the championship ballast of 45kg was removed from Gordon Shedden’s car in race two, the Civic drove from sixth to the lead in just four laps, whilst Jason Plato was now carrying 45kg of ballast for winning race one – so the cars were effectively the same weight.