The president of the Honda motorsports department left the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday with no regrets after winning the race with Andretti Autosport and Takuma Sato, even at the expense of three engine failures during the course of the full 500 miles.

Art St. Cyr’s technical staff pushed the limits to win with one of their 18 teams and they accomplished that goal.

The reliability of Honda motors had been a storyline all month, with teams pushing the manufacturer to give them more power for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. They arrived with the more powerful engine but lost several of them during the two weeks of track activity that led up to race weekend.

During the race itself, Fernando Alonso, Charlie Kimball and Ryan Hunter-Reay all suffered the same fate after leading a combined 60 laps.

That left St. Cyr with mixed emotions.

"Part of pushing to win these races is you have to push these engines as far as they'll go," St. Cyr told Autoweek in victory circle on Sunday. "We showed at the end that we needed every bit of horsepower that we could get against Hélio (Castroneves) to pull this off."

And after losing three competitive engines, did St. Cyr feel he was at risk of losing Sato's in the final laps?

"It was stressful, I'll tell you that," he said.

But more than anything else, St. Cyr was happy for Sato. After all, Sato has been with Honda since his Formula 1 career from 2002 to 2008.

"Honestly, what a great race," St. Cyr said. "That's what makes IndyCar so great. The best racing at the biggest race. The battle between Takuma and Hélio was one for the record books.

"I don't know if this place owed him one, but it was a sense of redemption for him after the move in 2012 that didn't work out against Dario (Franchitti). I couldn't be happier for Takuma. He works so hard and he's been here over and over and to finally get it is huge for us.

"He's been a part of the Honda family since he raced in Formula 1, so to have him with us is a great link between us and our Japanese staff. More than anything else, he's a great guy."

For his part, Michael Andretti said he doesn't blame Honda for any of the engine failure, likely an easier concession considering his team won the race for a second consecutive season.

"You're obviously concerned but you're dealing with the odds," Andretti said. "We have six cars, so if you have problems, a few of them will go down.

"I don't blame Honda and if anything else, I blame us for pushing them so hard to give us more power. We could have asked them for a more reliable engine, but we needed more power, so that results in more sad faces, like Alonso's."

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