September 07, 2023

David Salters, President of HPD, on his in Past, Present and Future in Motorsport | Nailing The Apex

43 minutes

On this episode of Nailing The Apex, Tim Hauraney sits down with President of Honda Performance Development (HPD) David Salters. David has been involved in building racing engines for a long time, starting with CART then moving over to building Mercedes V10 F1 engines, David walks us through how special the F1 V10 engines were, and how many engines McLaren would go through in one weekend during the V10 era (3:10). From working with Mercedes designing and building the V10, in 2006 David moved over to Ferrari F1 team and took the main position head of engine development, winning constructors championship in 2007, and 2008, while at Ferrari David worked hands on with some of the greats, and tells us about working with Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen (9:38). David was with Ferrari in 2008 when Felipe Massa lost the F1 drivers championship to Lewis Hamilton in the last few corners of the Brazilian Grand Prix and takes us through that day (13:27). While working in F1 and for Ferrari David worked with many Team Principals, and explains how Ross Brawn hired him at Ferrari (15:38). In 2013 when the new F1 V6 Hybrid Power Units were getting ready to be deployed, David tells us about the time Jean Todt, Bernie Eccelstone, came to check the noise that was coming out of the V6 Hybrid Power Units. Then talks us through how F1 missed the opportunity to tell the public just how efficient the Hybrid Power Units were (19:19). The F1 V6 Hybrid Power units are extremely complex, and David was the first to build them for Ferrari and he tells us just how difficult they were to conceptualize and execute (22:23). 2024 IndyCar will switch over to a 2.2 litre V6 Turbo Hybrid, Honda is involved in this process (27:18), David takes us through where the technology will live on the IndyCar and explains while certain elements are placed in particular areas, and how the push to pass, and regeneration will work on the Honda Power Unit (31:45). David tells us that the Hybrid technology won’t interfere with the sound of the Honda IndyCar engines (39:00)

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