Rookie on the Storm

"The evolution and development of a car must be done step by step," said Yves Courage, the founder and president of Courage Competition. "The new C70 LMP1 should be considered a 'living lab', onto which we will base the development of the cars to be sold to our clients."

One of those clients is Acura, which will campaign the LC75 in the American Le Mans Series next year (and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the not too distant future). Honda Racing Development in the United States is in charge of engine development. As of press time, Acura hasn't announced the drivers or teams that will manage the program, but there are strong rumors that Mario Andretti and Andretti-Green Racing will likely front one of the teams.

Rookie On The Storm
Repsol Honda's Nicky Hayden may lead in the points, but it's 20-year-old Dani Pedrosa who is taking MotoGP by storm.

The MotoGP British Grand Prix at Donnington Park was rookie Dani Pedrosa's second victory of the season, solidifying his hold on second place in the championship. After the race he said, "I'm not looking at the championship position because that's not my target this year. My focus is still on getting the best performance from myself and taking profit from my opportunities."

But still, you can't help but make the comparisons to Valentino Rossi. Like Rossi Pedrosa won championships in the 125cc and 250cc classes before jumping into MotoGP at an early age. Rossi was 21. Pedrosa, now 21, was 20 at the start of the season. And he has even shown flashes of Rossiesque flair.

In his first MotoGP race, at Jerez in Spain, he charged on the heels of Ducati's Loris Capirossi from the opening lap to the white flag. At his second win at Donnington, he started on pole. He gave up the lead after going wide at a right-hand hairpin. Dropped back to third, Pedrosa fought his way back, took the lead four laps after losing it and then pulled away by as many as six seconds. The only other rider seemingly able to beat his pace was Valentino Rossi.

It took Pedrosa's Repsol Honda teammate, Nicky Hayden, three years to win his first race and four to win two. Pedrosa has equaled that mark in half a season. And with another half to go, it looks like the 2006 championship could be the rookie's to win. But Yamaha's Rossi lurks in third.

Transmission: Chuck Seitsinger
After sitting out 2004 with funding and mechanical issues, Chuck Seitsinger's Alternative Motorsport is now doing the impossible-beating Chevy.

Honda Tuning: What's made the difference this year?Chuck Seitsinger: We started doing our own motors. We learned from our mistakes last year and found the limits of things. We went back to the old school rules. Before, we were trying to do what everyone else was doing and unfortunately it wasn't consistent. We listened to a lot of people and maybe what worked for them didn't work for us. So we basically just backed up and did what we knew was right. We simplified things. And everything is working great. I've got the same motor in the car that I had last year at Phoenix. That motor is still in the car and we cannot hurt that motor.

HT: So you went back to what made you so successful in 2004?CS: What we've put together right now-and it's just a GSR motor with different rod links, we still use the stock crank and stuff like that-with everything that we've done and all the specialty stuff that we've done, we cannot hurt this motor. We put 60 lbs. of boost on it. We've tried running more timing than we should. We cannot hurt this motor.

HT: What about the rest of the setup?CS:[The NHRA] made us run 26-inch tires, so we had to downsize the tires.

HT: How did that alter your transmission setup?CS: We changed the gears around a little bit to run the 26's, but when we started racing in '04, we came out with 26's, so we already knew what ballpark we needed to be in. And so we were really close at the first race. My car was never built for 28's. When we put in 28's, they don't clear the front end. We have to raise the front end, raise the suspension, rescale the car. It just doesn't work as well with the 28s as it's worked with the 26's. We also went with Full-Race [Motorsports], which sponsored the manifold for the car. So we changed turbo manifolds, and that's definitely worked the car up a little bit. We picked up some mph with it. T1 [Race Development], Tony Palo, is still doing all the tuning and doing all the latest fabrication. He's an excellent tuner and an excellent fabricator-it takes a great group of guys. I've got a good crew chief, in Randy Sprague, who does all the heads. He's also in charge of building and honing the blocks, getting everything to weight. Basically, he and I build the motors together.