After losing four of the first five races of the 2022 Indycar season, the Indy 500 May 29 is as close as it gets to a must-win for Honda. Chip Ganassi Racing looks to be in the best position to put Honda’s season back on track, so to speak, at the Indy 500.
In case you haven’t been paying attention (I wish I had not been paying attention at times), Chevy has dominated the season, winning the first four races of the season until Colton Herta (Andretti-Honda) led a 1-2 finish with Simon Pagenaud (Meyer-Shank-Honda) in the Grand Prix of Indy, which was a wet-dry-wet race.
Chevy is about two full races ahead of Honda in the manufacturer’s standings with 12 races to go. Defending driver’s champion Alex Palou (Ganassi-Honda) is the leading Honda runner in the driver’s standings, trailing Will Power (Penske-Chevy) by 14 points.
Given that, a lot of Indycar pundits (yes, there are such people), picked Chevy to finally reverse Honda’s domination of the event the last two seasons. So far, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda has had other ideas, demolishing the other teams in qualifying with four cars in the top six, and all five cars in the top twelve. Honda had a total of seven cars in the top twelve, with Takuma Sato (Coyne-Honda) Romain Grosjean (Andretti-Honda) making it seven Honda’s in the top twelve.
Scott Dixon (Ganassi-Honda) qualified on pole with teammates Alex Palou second, Marcus Ericsson fifth and Tony Kanaan sixth. Jimmy Johnson was 12th.
Honda has been fastest in all of the practice and qualifying sessions this season except the first round of qualifying Saturday (which was weather-affected). And in Monday’s practice sessions with new race engines for all cars, Hondas had the top 5 speeds (led by Palou) and 11 of the top 14 cars in the speed standings.
So, going by the data available, it looks like another good race for Honda. That said, here are a few questions about the Honda at the Indy 500 and through the season so far:
How did Chevy gain an edge on Honda in the first four races?
Over the winter Ray Gosselin, Ryan Hunter-Reay’s long time race engineer at Andretti Autosport, re-joined Ilmor Engineering, which makes the Chevy Engines. He is credited with improving the drivability of the Chevy-Ilmor engine and expanded customization of the package for individual driver tastes. It used to be that Chevy offered a small number of engine maps and drivers had to fit into one of those windows. Honda, by contrast, has always modified maps to suit drivers.
On road and street courses, that has put Chevy on more of a level playing field and resulted in Chevy winning four races to open the season. There is an interesting article about that here: ( LINK ) https://the-race.com/indycar/indycars-engine-war-twist-came-at-a-bad-time-for-chevy/
For the Indy 500, more normal Honda-Chevy differences seem to be in effect. Honda seems to be the engine to have, though Chevy seems to have caught up a bit. Or maybe its just that the McLaren team has improved?
What is Honda’s advantage on the Indy oval?
One word: Torque.
For the Indy oval, Indycar sets up four speed traps: entering turn 1, exiting turn 2, entering 3 and exiting turn 4. Traps 1 and 3 measure turn-in speed at the end of the straights. Traps 2 and 4 measure speed coming off the corners entering the straights.
For Monday’s practice with race engines, Chevy and Honda cars were pretty comparable at the end of the straights. There was a stark difference in traps 2 and 4. In both of those 7 or the top 10 speeds were for Hondas. This means that Hondas are accelerating faster coming out of the corners than the Chevys are. Similarly, the Hondas seem to have higher “minimum speed” in the corners. If the car is set up to follow another car closely, this would make passes at the end of the following straight more possible.
Another advantage that is mentioned in the article from The Race is that Honda’s shift smoother and faster. This must have something to do with the shift without life electronics Honda uses.
Finally, it is thought that Hondas deal better with heat. This shows up in the ability to follow other cars closer for longer before needing to back off to get clean air to cool the engine.
What is not known is whether Chevy has made any inroads on Honda’s fuel mileage advantage at Indy. We won’t see that until the race, and maybe not even then.
Where is Ganassi’s performance coming from?
Aside from the Honda performance advantages, the clear top Honda team is Chip Ganassi Racing. Other than the power plant, there are really only two areas that can make a car faster at Indy: Minimum friction/drag and suspension set-up. There are people on Indycar teams that do nothing but work on eliminating friction (mostly in the transmission gears and various bearings), and another set of people who smooth out body seams for weeks to address aero drag.
Ed Carpenter Racing is commonly thought to have raised friction and drag elimination to an art form. But Ganassi is clearly pretty good at that as well.
From a suspension point of view, each team does its own. The goal is to make the aero-platform as stable as possible. Andretti and Penske used to be recognized experts at this. But Ganassi and ECR have clearly eclipsed them recently. Why? I am betting on the addition of the aero screen in 2020. Since then, Ganassi has been the dominant team for every type of Indycar race. Meanwhile, Penske and Andretti have slipped. So my bet is that Ganassi and Carpenter have a better handle on the peculiarities the aero screen introduced in 2020 than their peers.
How important is winning the Indy 500 to Honda?
First, competitors are in Indycar to win Indy. It matters more than anything. It makes your season. This is true for manufacturers as well. Winning Indy is much more important than winning the season-long manufacturer’s race.
That said, when you include the Indy 500 as part of the Indycar season, this is a must-win race for Honda. Honda has the best engine, the best team (Ganassi), and a collection of about four other cars that could also win the race. Honda clearly has a better chance than Chevy. When you look at the rest of the calendar, Honda can’t count on having the advantage it’s had at street races in the past (Chevy won both Long Beach and St. Petersburg) and might be at a slight disadvantage on road courses and short ovals as well.
Word in the paddock is that Honda’s “step 1” engines introduced at Monday’s practice represent an improvement in performance over the engines that started the season. Honda fans can only hope the Monday practice results top heavy with Hondas is repeated several times this season.
How is the silly season going?
The big news, as expected, is that Alexander Rossi is apparently leaving Andretti and Honda for McLaren-Chevy. His reasoning is that he would have a better chance of winning a title at McLaren. The issue with that logic is the presence on that team of one Pato O’Ward. If Rossi’s goal is to win a driver’s championship, can he beat Pato in a car designed for Pato? I’m not sure. Also, it seems clear that the best place to be if one wants to win an Indycar title is Ganassi. Apparently, Ganassi wasn’t interested in Rossi. There were rumors that Rossi would replace either Dixon, Ericsson or Jimmy Johnson. So either all of those drivers are staying, or Ganassi has someone else in mind for any seat that could become available.
This move would make room for Kyle Kirkwood to rejoin Andretti from AJ Foyt racing next season.
Who is going to win the race?
If I were making a bet, I would bet on one of the five Ganassi cars. They have speed, and they are good in traffic. They are clearly the best in all conditions. And if one of them is in position to win with 25 laps to go, I would expect them to win. Forced to make a choice, I would choose Dixon. He has only won one 500, and you can sense that he is aching for another one. Plus he and Alex Palou (Ganassi-Honda) clearly have the best cars of the Ganassi bunch. Sentimentally, I would love to see Tony Kanaan win his second. This could be his last best chance to win.
On a side note, there has been some discussion that with Ganassi cars in four of the top six spots, we might see some of them try to group up in an attempt to pull away from the field, similar to how a bicycle team operates.
As for other Honda drivers, Takuma Sato (Coyne-Honda) has won the race for two different teams (Coyne would be the third) and clearly knows something about how to win the race. And I would not fall over dead if his teammate David Malukas (Coyne-Honda) won.
As for Chevy drivers, the obvious choice is Rinus VeeKay (ECR-Chevy). He’s been the best Chevy the last two seasons and is starting on the front row. His practice pace has been just OK, though, which indicates that he might have issues in traffic. McLaren’s Pato O’Ward and Rinus VeeKay have been inconsistent and they underperformed in Sunday qualifying. And I just don’t see Ed Carpenter winning.
As far as Penske drivers, the Indy 500 is a huge hole in Josef Newgarden’s resume. He is clearly one of the best drivers in the series, and he is capable of winning any race at any time. But Will Power has won the race and has been consistent this year, so don’t rule him out.
Coverage starts at 11:00AM Sunday on NBC with the green flag waving at 12:45PM.
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