[Supra GTR]

At the 2006 New York Motorshow, Acura announced their return to sportscar racing and displayed a Courage LC75 chassis to be powered by an Acura 3.4 litre V8. In the press release the company expressed their desire to commence their renewed competition campaign in the 2007 American Le Mans Series. The Courage will be tested alongside a similarly powered Lola B05/40 chassis in the fall of 2006. In the future Acura plan to produce their own chassis as well.

With Acura's entering the fray... 2007 American LeMans, we'll see if Nissan and Toyota/Lexus will enter. 2007 is shaping up to be an interesting year in LeMans racing.

 

[John79]

Yay, another "Honda with a V8 that will never make production into an of their cars!". Hope they remembered to make it RWD.

John

 

[TrueSlideXL]

Not fully in house/no care. Have they fixed their F1 cars yet? It seems to me Honda wants to draw attention away from it, just look at the SCCA series with the RSX and RL and all they have been over publicizing it. It used to be all Honda, now the only factory backed Honda in high motorsports is their F1 effort. All the rest has been left to Acura. I doubt they can win the class they have entered. It's too much to ask of a newly structured team. The next best LM chassis to Audi is Lola. No way Acura knows something Mazda, AER, or Zytek haven't tried. As usual the Corvettes and Audis will be the one's to watch. As soon as Porsche fixes their electrical problems I think they can dominate too. Aston Martin has been disappointing since their intial year. Overall it looks like 2007 will be a repeat of 05 and 06. The only big upsets I can think of would be a Dodge effort. Everyone else is weaksauce, even my favorite team Panoz is doing poorly.

 

[Supra GTR]

You might have purposely omitted the IMSA Acura Spice GTP-Light cars of the early 90s. Very successful campaign by a car not built completely in-house. In fact, 3 championships 91-93. Sometimes, you just have to know your weaknesses and get it reinforced by those who have the expertise.

Why not invest in a series that fans can relate to as well as attend. It hasn't been all Honda since Acura's came to the US back in the late 80s. Acura's have always been represented in sportscar racing especially World Challenge and IMSA with the Integras and NSX's (NSX wore the Acura banner), and now why not protoypes? It worked for them before. Acura knew something back in IMSA GTP Light days.. why wouldn't they try something now?

Porsche's LMP2 just dominated Mid-Ohio finishing 1st and 2nd in class ...and overall. With the Audi R8 coming in 3rd overall, 1st in class. Best chassis currently for 06 ALMS is battle between Audi LMP1 and Porsche LMP2.

Aston Martin has been battling closely with the C6Rs in ALMS GT1. Not disappointing at all, finishing 3rd and 4th at Mid-Ohio. At one time the DBR9 was leading several laps of the race.

With Acura entering the ALMS fray and Mazda already involved... Nissan/Infiniti and Toyota/Lexus will soon follow, thereby making the 07+ years interesting. Maybe I'm seeing it as an increase in marques that make it more interesting. I'm certainly not asking them to win, but I welcome their decision to compete.


Regards,
James R