INDYCAR: Schmidt plans to stay with Honda

Verizon IndyCar Series entrant Sam Schmidt expects his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports outfit to stay within the Honda family for the foreseeable future.

"That's our plan," Schmidt told RACER. "It would be much more difficult for us to do what [Ganassi] did by going to Chevy; we're not going to get a subsidy, and we'd have to start all over on the development side. There's pros and cons for calling Chevy, but we're pretty happy with what we did this year with Honda and just need to eliminate some of the mistakes so we can better compete."

According to Schmidt, who co-owns his team with Ric Peterson, last week's return of Chip Ganassi Racing to the Honda camp was met with mixed emotions. On the surface, it would appear to move SPM down the Japanese brand's depth chart, but he isn't planning to leave in reaction to CGR's switch from Chevy.

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"You could look at it from a couple of perspectives," he said. "Historically, when Chip makes these manufacturer changes, they're doing heavy evaluations on their side, and there's a monetary reason for doing it. But at the core, everybody there wants to win races. There have been calls from other Honda team owners who are pissed off and they'd been negotiating or asking for development funding and other things, and it feels like a little bit of a slap in the face that this happened. That's one way to look at it, [but] I don't see it as a reason to go elsewhere."

If anything, Schmidt says he's interested to see if the addition of CGR will have a marked impact on the brand's competitiveness.

"The other thing to look at is we've been busting our ass, we're not satisfied with where we ended up in the points, and now we'll have the true validation of the reason [Honda] haven't been a championship contender the past three seasons," he continued. "We've heard it was because it was the strength of the lineup; [Honda] needed better drivers or better teams. Now I guess we'll find out.

"Ganassi was the first team to sign up for Honda's shared technical partner program, and they have a lot more to gain from it than any other team at this point. And I'm sure they'll have a lot to give back once they get up to speed. If nothing else, it will be another extremely strong team pushing Honda hard from the other side, and I don't mind the competition they bring to the show."