While Honda's latest racing announcement is a positivist preview for the 2007 racing season, including F1, IndyCar, SuperGT, etc. What's interesting to us are the E100-ready engine announcements.

As you're probably aware, Honda supplies all the engines for the IndyCar series, which is moving from a 90 percent methanol/10 percent ethanol blend to a 100 percent ethanol fuel this year. Honda's been testing the new E100 friendly engines since last year (see related links below). All IndyCar teams will use Honda's V8 HI7R engines again this season, and the engine displacement has been increased to 3500cc (from 3000cc). This increase gives the cars more torque at low-rpm ranges and is necessary because horsepower output with ethanol is lower than with the old methanol/ethanol formula. Auto Racing Daily says the new engines are getting "rave reviews."

ARD asked race team technical leader for Honda Performance Development Roger Griffiths about the new engines, and he said:

"The most important aspect to the fuel change is making sure that all components in the engine that come into contact with the fuel are 'ethanol compatible.' This includes the fuel injectors, fuel lines and seals. The Engine Control Unit [ECU] settings also have been adjusted to meet the "burn" requirements of ethanol. Fuel mileage also has improved, to the point that the 2007 fuel cells have been reduced in size to 22 gallons."

Related:

• Honda tests 100 percent ethanol IRL engine at Daytona
• Andretti Green testing with bigger Honda engine, ethanol
• Honda's IRL engines will get bigger with switch to ethanol
• Honda Insight rally team ready to race again
• No more engine whine! Could Formula 1 go diesel?

[Source: Honda, Auto Racing Daily]

Honda's certainly been at the center of the green-car universe these days with their recent annoucements of a 2009 fuel cell vehicle, 2009 50-state clean diesel, flex-fuel engines for Brazil, variable displacement motorcycle engines and Advanced VTEC. Adding to the list, Crash.net reports a successful debut test of the 100 percent ethanol engines for the 2007 Indy Racing League season.

On Tuesday, during the IRL's first compatibility test of the Daytona International Speedway, Tony Kanaan and Sam Hornish Jr. piloted Honda's new 3.5 liter ethanol-only V8 power plant. Both drivers reported little trouble adjusting to the new package while manipulating Daytona's motorcycle road course. Kanaan said "it ran perfect," while Hornish told reporters "we've already reached speeds of 190 mph, and we're not really pushing it."

Honda engineers were also pleased with the test results. Honda Performance Development (HPD) technical leader Roger Griffiths said that the drivers and cars ran the entire day without any significant mechanical issues and that they would use the newly gathered data to make fuel-mapping adjustments for the new fuel.

Related:

• Honda's IRL engines will get bigger with switch to ethanol

[Source: Crash.net]