Honda blows another engine

Servia blew the guts out of his Honda on Monday

Houston does Honda have a problem? Honda powered engines took six of the top-10 fastest qualifying speeds, and they’ve been consistently atop the speed charts in practice. However, as practice has continued Honda has blown, or run into, at least seven engine-related problems, while Chevrolet has none.

That's 7 Honda failures in the last 8 days if our count is right. In the early season races Honda has lost far more engines than Chevy.

Fernando Alonso, who has had several Honda reliability problems in Formula 1 this year, was forced to change an engine just prior to Sunday’s Fast 9 qualifying session.

In Monday’s practice session for the Indy 500, Oriol Servia, driving a second Honda powered entry for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, let out a plume of smoke as his engine expired. It was a presumably brand new engine in the No. 16 Honda that let go after only 36 laps of practice. Servia’s teammate Graham Rahal was plagued by apparent engine issues early last week when his engine expired on day one of practice.

Prior to his vicious qualifying crash for the 500-mile race, Sebastien Bourdais suffered an engine failure just three laps into last Saturday’s running of the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.

Chevrolet, with the exception of Ed Carpenter Racing and Will Power, hasn’t shown the same straightline speed that Honda powered teams have, but their durable cars could be enough to win the race.