Monday, May 29, 2017
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS
All the negative publicity Honda received in the lead-up to the Indianapolis 500 washed away when Takuma Sato dumped a bottle of 2 percent milk over his head in victory lane.
So what if three Honda engines blew up Sunday while they were running with the leaders?
It only took one to win “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
“We sort of knew you’re going with the odds when you have six cars,” said Sato team owner Michael Andretti, whose cars had two of the failed engines. “We only needed one to come through.”
In truth, the blown engines of Ryan Hunter-Reay, Charlie Kimball and Fernando Alonso merely put a hazy cloud far in the background of a banner day for Honda. The company whose power surpassed that of rival Chevrolet throughout May not only ushered the Japanese driver past Helio Castroneves and across the finish line, but counted four of the top five finishers and six of the top eight.
Ed Jones finished third, Max Chilton was fourth and Tony Kanaan was fifth, while Sato’s teammates on Andretti Autosport, Alexander Rossi and Marco Andretti, also finished in the top eight.
It was the third time in four years that Honda had reached victory lane.
“When I was seeing each Honda going away I’m like, ‘Here we go.’ That’s what I said,” said Castroneves, whose Team Penske teammates hoped the reliability of their Chevrolet engines would win the day. “They gave the good engine to Alonso but they gave the meaning engine to Takuma Sato.”
Honda has had engine trouble all season, losing five at Long Beach, eight more at Phoenix and two during the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. But the focus became more intense in the lead-up to the biggest race of the season. A handful of engines went down during practice and qualifying, and James Hinchcliffe lost his engine with only minutes left in the final practice on Carb Day.
Honda engineers found some commonalities in the engine failures, but they were never able to fully diagnose what was causing the problem. And that left teams a bit nervous on Sunday.
For a while, it looked as if everything would be OK.
The Honda-powered cars went straight to the front, dominating the early laps. But then the first groan echoed across the speedway went Hunter-Reay’s car came to a halt 64 laps from the end, and Kimball’s car experienced the same fate 21 laps later.
Alonso was still running in the top 10 when his engine let go on the front straightaway with 20 laps to go, just as the two-time Formula One champ was working his way back to the front.
All of them had led laps — Hunter-Reay for 28, Alonso for 27 and Kimball for five. And the fact that Hunter-Reay and Alonso were part of the six-team Andretti Autosport effort, it was little surprise that their troubles gave Andretti some serious concern in the closing laps of the race.