St. Cyr told Motorsport.com: “I’m not going to make any predictions about that. Sometimes you win races you shouldn’t really win, and then sometimes you dominate but you don’t win. All I can say is that we’ll try and win them all.

“When you look at how close everything is, especially the road and street courses, one second will typically spread the top 18 or 19 cars, so you don’t need to find much to move up.”

Asked if HPD’s Indy 500 performance last year – Honda-powered cars occupied five of the Firestone Fast Nine on the grid and led 129 laps of the race – was a mainly a result of an engine upgrade, St. Cyr replied: “I think our Indy performance was a result of the aerokit, the engines, the teams learning about the aerokits, and our drivers really laying it on the line and driving to the limit.

“But yes, I think it’s safe to say that our engine at Indy last year was better than at the beginning of the year.

“Does that translate to all [turbo] boost levels? [1.3-bar for superspeedways, 1.4 for short ovals and 1.5 for road and street courses] The simple answer is ‘yes’ – but it’s not a direct translation, so some aspects of it are better at lower boost and some things are better at higher boost. Still, power is power, whatever boost level you’re at.”

Regarding further engine upgrades since then, St. Cyr said: “For this year we’ve been pretty limited in terms of what we’re allowed to change. Last year was quite big – we could change the whole combustion chamber, for instance. This year we’re back to things like pistons and valves, so you can’t take as big a step.

“That being said, we did do a lot of work on the engine in the off-season, and we believe we improved performance for all tracks.”

However, with IndyCar freezing aerokit development for 2017, St. Cyr admitted that this final year of manufacturer-built kits might disguise engine progress.

“Aerokit-wise there’s nothing we’re allowed to do,” he said, “but we did at least fill in the holes in our knowledge, areas that weren’t totally understood last year. So now the teams have a more complete set of tools to maximize what we have.”

According to St. Cyr, the engine upgrades for next year are “fairly small again” but that he hopes the universal aerokits will highlight engine strengths.

“I think initially when the universal kit arrives, at first you’ll see the best teams become prominent as they’ll have the resources to learn them quicker. It won’t be until afterward that you’ll see more substantial differences in engine performance – if there are any.”