Breaking up the pack

Photo: Motorsport.com

If you missed the IndyCar Series race at Texas last Saturday night, you missed a good one.

But while the racing was exciting, not everybody saw the event as a roaring success. Sébastien Bourdais, who is likely out for the season as he continues to recover from injuries sustained at Indianapolis, is apparently not sorry to have been on the sidelines for the race, using some colorful language to express his displeasure with the racing that took place.

Scott Dixon, who was in contention for the win until a crash with Takuma Sato in the closing laps (pictured), stated that additional testing on the new Texas layout could have prevented it from becoming a pack race. The nature of the racing at Texas eliminated all but six cars from the lead lap by the end of the night, leading to discussions over how to minimize such racing in the future.

Ed Carpenter, however, is unconvinced that the pack nature of the race should be blamed on the cars, saying it may be the drivers who need to change in order to avoid the major accidents that took place. Only time will tell. The series does not return to an oval greater than a mile in length until Pocono on August 20.

Dear Honda...

The Power of Dreams?

Dear Honda,

I respect you guys about as much as I respect any other car manufacturer that doesn't particularly pique my interest. I don't love your cars, but I certainly don't hate them either. My mother's Honda Civic lasted her fifteen years. Your cars are known for their reliability.

Which begs the question: what the heck is going on with your racing engines?

Now, I understand your early struggles. You re-entered Formula One in 2015, the second year of the V6 engine era. Mercedes, Ferrari, and Renault already had a year's worth of experience off of which to build. You showed slight improvement in 2016, but were still well off the pace, never making it onto the podium for the second straight season.

There's no excuse at this point though. McLaren make a good chassis. They have good drivers. As Fernando Alonso stated in March, there is "only one problem: that is the power unit."

And it's quite a big problem at the moment. So much so that Alonso basically said, "Forget it, the season's already lost so I'm gonna go run the Indy 500."

Now, it seems you guys create durable, strong engines over in IndyCar. At least, that's what you bragged about in 2010. But there were a few Honda engine issues in practice, so reliability was not a sure thing this month of May.

Alonso did quite well, running up front until about twenty laps to go when he dropped out because, what else, his Honda engine failed.

Come on. Really? Even in IndyCar, where you have far more recent experience than your Chevrolet counterparts, Alonso can't trust you guys?

I'm just going to keep this short and sweet, Honda: get your act together.

Alonso is a pure talent. Unfortunately, largely thanks to your engines, that talent is being wasted at the moment.