INDIANAPOLIS — Alexander Rossi’s crew spent Wednesday night changing the engine in his car.
At least IndyCar’s Ed Carpenter Racing had some experience making the switch. It made the same switch Tuesday night - on the team owner’s car.
And with the turbocharged power boost coming Friday, qualifications set for Saturday and Sunday and the season’s biggest race, a sold out Indianapolis 500, looming on May 24, it’s enough to create angst for anyone - even someone with Rossi’s expansive racing resume.
“I am concerned,” said Rossi, the 2016 Indy winner and a former Formula One driver. “It’s not only Ed, I mean, there’s been two others as well. So you’re going to have to ask like, we don’t have the full information as to, are they the same failures? Is it something that’s a batch thing?”
The engine manufacturer wants answers, too.
Three drivers - Rossi, Carpenter and Scott McLaughlin of Team Penske - have all made engine changes this week. A Chevy spokesman said each engine went back to Detroit for inspection.
It’s a perplexing problem for a series that has significantly reduced the number of mechanical failures over the past few decades. In recent years, the caution periods for breakdowns that once seemed so commonplace have become a rarity.
But this week has caused some drivers to wonder whether that trend can continue through a second week on the Brickyard’s 2.5-mile oval and the series’ longest race.
Still, the Chevys have performed well. Two of the three fastest qualifiers on last year’s 33-car starting grid, including pole winner Robert Shwartzman, were powered by Chevys. So were second- and third-place race day finishers David Malukas and Pato O’Ward.
O’Ward also posted the fastest lap in Thursday’s practice at 227.308 mph, and Conor Daly still has the fastest lap of the first three practices at 228.080. Both also are Chevy drivers, and both feel good about their prospects heading into each of the next two weekends.
“I kind of hate to say it because I don’t really want to get too far ahead of myself, but this is the best car ever had here, for sure,” Daly said Thursday morning. “I can confidently say that right now, I can cut through traffic like I’ve never been able to before. But the conditions have been very nice.”
The ever-changing temperatures and wind gusts make the Brickyard one of the world’s trickiest and most unique racecourses. But when uncertainty about a car’s performance joins, it only creates more work for team and more worries for drivers.
There was good news for all three drivers in practice on a day many teams spent the bulk of practice either fine-tuning their qualifying setups or banking data that could help them race day.
Carpenter, a three-time Indy pole winner, had 10th fastest lap Thursday at 225.061. McLaughlin, the 2024 Indy pole winner, was 12th at 224.979. And after spending the end of Wednesday’s practice watching his team work on the engine, Rossi returned to the track Thursday and was the busiest driver of all. He turned the most laps, 68, and posted the fifth-fastest lap at 226.364.
That should help Rossi relax a little bit heading into the weekend and race day.
“All that I know is Chevy is just as focused on making sure we can have a strong month, and we know that for the most part, we are the engine to beat,” he said. “So, hopefully, the bad luck’s out of the way.”
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