Eleven days ago Honda announced Robert Clarke will retire on January 1st from his post as the head of Honda Performance Development and take up an advisory role until his ultimate retirement from Honda after twenty-seven years at the end of June.
Clarke has run HPD in Santa Clarita, California since its inception in 1993. He was hired by American Honda’s Tom Elliott to put HPD together and lead Honda’s motorsports program in the United States and Clarke helped drive the company to four CART manufacturer championships, two Indy 500 wins and two IRL titles before Honda became the IRL’s spec engine supplier two years ago.
This year, American Honda expanded into the ALMS series with an Acura-branded LMP2 programme. The sports car programme kicked-off with a storybook class win and second place overall in this year’s Sebring 12 hours.
Over the rest of the season the trio of Acura teams were comprehensively outpaced by the pair of well-developed Penske/Porsche Spyder LMP2 cars, but Clarke says the surprise performance by the Andretti-Green Acura team at Sebring this year was the highlight of his fifteen-year tenure as the boss of HPD.
“Sebring showcased the company’s accumulated ability,” Clarke commented. “Fifteen years of work was demonstrated at that event. All the years of developing the expertise within the company - the structures, the facility and procedures for doing things. In the early days we struggled to screw an engine together and now we’re completely designing and manufacturing engines along with all the chassis stuff.
“So that was a pretty special moment. All that work came together and to have it showcased in such a grand way at such an historic event and beating the likes of Penske and Porsche was a great feeling for everyone involved with the project.”
