Honda Racing Corporation USA has a new president. Kelvin Fu, who has spent more than a decade at HRC US and its predecessor Honda Performance Development, takes over from David Salters on September 12, 2026, the organization announced on September 8 from its Santa Clarita, California headquarters.
Salters is leaving HRC US for a technology startup outside the motorsports industry. His exit is a clean one by any competitive measure: three NTT IndyCar Series manufacturers’ championships and five drivers’ titles during his tenure, plus the full sweep of the 2022 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, taking the teams’, drivers’ and manufacturers’ crowns in a single season. He also shepherded two significant electrified racing programs to production, the Acura ARX-06 LMDh prototype launched for the 2023 IMSA season and the hybrid-powered IndyCar that debuted in 2024, both of which required HRC US to absorb new powertrain disciplines while remaining competitive at the front of their respective fields.
Before HPD, Salters compiled an engine-development resume that moved through the upper tier of global motorsport. He led internal combustion engine power unit development for the Ferrari Formula 1 program, headed Formula 1 engine development at Mercedes-Benz High-Performance Engines (formerly Ilmor), and worked as a development and design engineer on the CART IndyCar program at Cosworth Racing. He joined HPD in 2015 as chief engineer and engine technical leader, moved to technical director in 2019, and became president in 2020.
Fu’s background runs in a different direction. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, followed by a PhD and postdoctoral appointment at UC Berkeley and a second postdoctoral stint at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His early career was in aerospace and defense: R&D engineer and then product manager at HR Textron, followed by director of engineering at ITT Aerospace. He joined HPD in 2015, the same year as Salters, taking responsibility for chassis design, aerodynamics and the performance engineering group. He was named director of programs in 2020 and vice president in 2021.
In that VP role, Fu was directly involved in four of HRC US’s 17 Indianapolis 500 victories. The 500 is the most visible single metric in American open-wheel racing, and four wins in roughly five years of senior leadership is a meaningful contribution to Honda’s record at the Brickyard.
The transition comes as HRC US has been expanding beyond pure competition. In 2024 the organization added consumer performance parts and merchandise to its business. In August 2026, it launched a heritage racing operation connecting collectors with Honda and Acura historic race cars. Fu named those ventures explicitly as part of his mandate going forward, alongside the organization’s renewed IndyCar commitment.
Fu’s engineering and programmatic depth, built across chassis, aero, and race program management at the same organization he now leads, gives him a different kind of institutional knowledge than Salters brought from the outside. Salters arrived with Formula 1 and CART pedigree and used it to modernize HRC US’s powertrain programs for the hybrid era. Fu built his credibility inside the building. The question of which approach produces more change at the front of the IndyCar grid will start to answer itself over the next few seasons, beginning September 12.
Source: Honda. Images courtesy of Honda.
