Honda At The Indy 500

This past weekend was the running of the Indianapolis 500. The race is the highlight of the season for IndyCar and of course it gets more attention than most other events in the series.

If you watched the race you noticed one major theme. The Chevrolet powered cars are a lot better than the Honda powered cars, but why is this?

To find out more about why Honda is less competitive on IndyCar click past the jump (or scroll down if you came directly to the full article).

So, just what makes the cars using Chevy motors faster? Well, if you look at just the engines they should be the same. On paper the Honda offers 575 horsepower on speedways, 625 horsepower on ovals and 675 horsepower on road corses. These numbers are the same as Chevy’s IndyCar V6.

There is one major engine related difference that each of the 2.2-liter cars has and that is turbo placement. The Hondas have their turbochargers more toward the front of the engine and Chevrolet keeps theirs more towards the rear. This could be a factor in weight distribution as the turbochargers are fairly heavy units in the open-wheeled series.

Another and bigger difference is the aero kit. For many years all teams used the same kit, but with a rules change allowing each manufacture to also supply the aero kits for the cars that has changed. And we all know that the more aerodynamic a car is the quicker it will be.

Add in the different aerodynamics and placement of the turbo with the fact that most of the teams currently running a Honda motor have less money and you begin to see the issue. At the Indy 500 Graham Rahal was the top finishing Honda powered car. He finished 5th, and various factors that made the car less competitive helped keep him from challenging for the lead.

Honda will likely rework things after this season to make their cars more competitive, but until then expect to see someone driving a car with a bow tie on the engine to win most races this year.

Do, you agree with our reasons why the Hondas are slower? Let us know in the comments.