Steve Horne Q and A

When Steve Horne was announced as the replacement for Mark Skaife as Chairman of the V8 Supercars Commission, many fans might have asked "Steve who?"

But the reality is the New Zealander is a veteran of global motorsport with an in-depth understanding of the glories, positives, negatives, perils and potential pitfalls professional racing brings.

Horne started off as a mechanic before becoming a team manager and was then a team owner during the greatest years of the CART Indy Car Championship.

These days he lives back in New Zealand and runs a single-car team in the BNT V8 SuperTourers series.

Appointed to the V8 Supercars Commission last September, Horne purposely assumed a very low public profile as he learned more about the category and his role within it, chairing the body that monitors the rules, regulations and health of V8 Supercars racing.

However, six months into the job and with discussion and debate heating up as the 2014 Championship roars into action, Horne agreed to this interview with v8supercars.com.au.

Today, he discusses just what he has learned in his initial period as Chairman and explains the actions the Commission has taken in relation to the hot button topic of the moment; aerodynamics.

V8supercars.com.au: What was your understanding of the category before you became officially involved?

Horne: "I'd been around a little bit at various events. I had seen it at Pukekohe, seen it at Surfers when we ran Indy Cars there. To me, from the outside, it was always an extremely competitive form of racing with some reasonably high quality teams and certainly, some very good drivers."

When you were approached to get involved with the V8 Supercars Commission what was the brief?

"The Commission is a semi-autonomous body within V8 Supercars that is responsible for ratifying and making rules. Also to work alongside the manufacturers, work hand in hand with the technical department, but also I think when I came onboard, to make sure the teams took their team hat off and thought about the big picture of the sport. Obviously, there has been a massive changing of the guard from the CEO downwards. Certainly in my case I am still learning a lot and I think the sport is in really good health really."

Now that you have spent some time inside the category, has your perception and understanding of it changed?

"I don't think it has changed. I have more knowledge. I have been around a large number of categories at various levels and the standards here are really, really high. Really good quality teams, very, very good drivers and organisationally it is run very well. So, I don't see anything that says to me that something is out of whack, or drastically wrong with the whole concept.

"Obviously, it is a parity series and that means the target is always moving, but you only have to dispassionately look at it and say really this season we have had all manufactures, all brands, in the top 10.

"I don't know how much more you can define that. When you have qualifying spread over one second or less, how can you make it any more competitive than that? It's impossible."

Parity is always a hot button topic in pitlane. But the point that keeps getting emphasised is that you are after technical parity, not sporting parity.

"That is correct. There is technical parity no question, and it is up to the teams to take advantage of what they have in front of them. This is not socialised racing where everyone gets a chance. It's up to them to make the most of the tools they have available to them and some teams do a better job of that than others."

So you believe there is enough ability for the cars to be differentiated through tuning?

"Absolutely, because if you sat down and said all of the adjustments you had on the cars from tyre pressures, to fuel usage, to roll bar settings, to spring settings and ran a mathematical table on it, there are thousands and thousands of variations you can put on these cars, which is what the engineers are paid to do and the drivers are paid to optimise. There are massive variations and changes from one Holden to another Holden and you can see that in the results."

Do you now have a priority list of issues you are working through?

"Because it is a parity formula that is one thing that was obvious to me from the beginning; what's the definition of that and what are the tools we have got to measure that. The definition is relatively clear now I think. But the tools we have got, particularly in aero, engine and fuel consumption, I felt we needed to recheck our tools, we needed to make sure the ruler was still 12 inches long and we are going through that process now with aero."

That is a reference to the seven-member aero group you set-up recently?

"Yes, and I think people are a little confused by that. The commission has the ability to set up its own committees, really to investigate whatever it likes to investigate so it gets information and that is all this. It is a commission set-up committee that has a very short time span; it has nothing to do with the performance of the cars whatsoever. All it is, is confirming our procedures and processes, making sure we are measuring what we think we are measuring and we are measuring it with the accuracy we think we are measuring. So the way I would describe it in general terms is it is a medical check-up for our aero department. That's all it is, it has nothing to do ultimately with where the cars are at today.

"If we look at our medical check up and say it's not as accurate as we want it to be, maybe we should give people an opportunity - if they wanted to - to recheck their cars against the ruler. We are not at that stage at all, we are still measuring the tools. That will require the group that have got together to look at the procedures, look at the tools they have got, look at the speed they can run the test at from a logistical point of view, and what is going to happen now is we are going to go an recheck our procedures with the two datum cars, which are the Holden and Ford, and make sure we are confident in what we have got."

Is this a response to the Volvo?

"No nothing whatsoever to do with the Volvo. It's something I noticed really right from the beginning. It was probably highlighted more by the Nissan than anything, and obviously the Nissan had a chance to re-homologate because the data on track really probably didn't match the aero testing data in performance. So that gave them the opportunity and every other manufacturer had the opportunity to do what the Nissan did, but all the others said 'no we are happy'. Whether it was Ford, Holden, Erebus, they all said 'no we are happy with what we have got'. So the Nissan did go and re-test, was homologated and that is where we are at today.

"Obviously, the Volvo was a new car that came in and got homologated."

So what about the talk of a five-car aero parity test

"That is complete rubbish. At this stage it is rubbish because we are just checking the data. Now if by some relatively remote chance we find there may have been some error in our datum then everyone will be given the opportunity. We won't force them to, but if they want to come back and say 'we would like to be checked again'."

How long before your working group emerges with some conclusions?

"They have already done that. There has been a report back already with some suggestions and the next thing, as I say, is testing, running another aero test with the original Ford and Holden that set the original (parameters), that is the next part of this thing. If at the end of that we say 'look everything we have done we are really confident is correct end of story'. That (test) will happen after Pukekohe. The operational side eof that is up to Damien White (V8 Supercars General Manager - Motorsport) and his crew. The commission is not directly involved in that, we will be there 'observing'."

Will you use the category's own race cars?

"Yes, they are the original Car of the Future prototypes, they are our 'datum' cars."

Have you explored other areas of aero development such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)?

"That is something I think I have pushed a little bit. Our current aero program takes a one time snapshot really at one speed. It doesn't build an aero map, it doesn't check the cars in different angles, or yaw, or anything like that. So CFD can potentially be a complementary tool to that and actually can shortcut some of the time that gets spent at an aero test. Will we get to CFD? Probably, but it's not an over-riding magic bullet that is going to change anything really.

"Teams use CFD right now to develop their cars. Nissan did a very good CFD program and developed where they wanted to be, and when they came to the test were pretty sure what they wanted. It wasn't a case of let's try this and let's try that. That's where CFD is really good, but to model all of the current fie cars in CFD, that is a massive engineering task. It's not an overnight job and it is very expensive."

Click here for the second part of the interview, when Horne speaks on issues the Commission must address such as engine power equality, fuel consumption and longer term planning.