Going into 500 IndyCar remains uncompetitive

Honda unable to beat Chevy at the moment

One year later IndyCar remains an uncompetitive mess. And the Indianapolis 500 is seven weeks away.

Same as last year, Honda can't compete with Chevrolet. They're close, these two, but a fraction of a second over the course of 200 laps isn't the difference between winning and losing – it's the difference between a competition and a charade.

Right now, IndyCar is a charade. And the results are shocking.

Two races into the 2016 schedule, Chevrolet has led 342 of 360 laps. St. Petersburg was a road course. Phoenix was an oval. This gap between Chevrolet and Honda, it transcends track setup.

Maybe because Chevrolet's Dallara is a carbon-fiber chassis made of the finest honeycomb Kevlar and titanium. And Honda's Dallara is made of granite.

Not really – well, I hope not really – but the first two races make you wonder.

At St. Pete, Chevrolet drivers posted the top five qualifying times, then finished first (Juan Pablo Montoya), second (Simon Pagenaud) and fourth (Helio Castroneves) on March 13. Chevy led 92 of 110 laps.

At Phoenix it was worse. It was grotesque. Chevrolet drivers posted the top 10 qualifying times and claimed the top four finishing spots, eight of the top nine and 12 of the top 14 on April 2. Marco Andretti had the fastest Honda in qualifying, 11th overall, and he was nearly 3 mph behind the leader. Over 250 miles, that's a giraffe chasing a cheetah.

Phoenix was the oval, remember. A smaller version of IMS, which as it stands now will celebrate the magical 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 29 with a race that will be won by Chevrolet, with Chevrolet drivers also going two, three, four … Say, where's LeBron James when we need him?

Not five, not six, not seven …

Never mind the NBA analogy. Let's go with baseball, and point out what IndyCar has allowed: Honda is swinging a Louisville Slugger made of wood.

Chevrolet has an aluminum bat.

Chevrolet is blameless here. Well, maybe. Chevrolet's job is to produce the fastest car possible, but if you believe Marco Andretti – a Honda driver who joined several Chevrolet drivers at IMS on Tuesday for testing – then you believe Chevrolet is trying to conceal the size of its advantage, lest IndyCar actually do something about it. Because on Tuesday, Honda posted the fastest two times (Andretti and Ryan Hunter-Reay), and the fastest Chevrolet (Pagenaud) wasn't within 2 mph.

"Fun day at IMS," Andretti tweeted after testing, "besides the Chevys sand bagging."

Not everyone associated with Honda sees the sky falling. Bobby Rahal, co-owner of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team – and father of RLL driver Graham Rahal – reminded me of what happened last year: Chevrolet won eight of the first 10 races before Honda closed with wins in four of the final six. Rahal thinks the same will happen this season.

"Certainly everybody's got some concern," Rahal says, "but knowing what (improvements by Honda are) coming down the pike, I probably don't share those concerns to that level that you hear out there. There's some people gnashing their teeth, but I think that as we saw last year, Honda – particularly post-Indianapolis – made a lot of inroads. And I really think the same thing will happen this year."

Indeed, a combination of improvements by Honda and tweaks by IndyCar could balance the scales. Then again, Rahal's son – Graham – pointed out to USA Today earlier this spring that "you'd be an idiot" to think Chevrolet isn't going to improve its car, too.

IndyCar can fix this before the Indianapolis 500, but only if it believes the threat is real. It's absurd that we're still here, with one car clearly superior to the other, but here we are – again. Remember what happened last year, when Chevrolet was so much faster that it won all 14 contested poles in 2015. Never mind a pole; Honda couldn't get a driver on the front row all season.

Chevrolet drivers took the first four spots in year-end results. In the most important race of the year, the 2015 Indy 500, Chevrolet drivers posted the top five qualifying times and eight of the top 10 – and then finished first, second, third and fifth in the race.

That was last year. IndyCar vowed to fix it.

IndyCar hasn't fixed it.

It tried, somewhat. After Honda petitioned IndyCar to enact aero-kit Rule 9.3 – which allows a manufacturer to clean up a competitive imbalance – IndyCar tested 2015 champion Scott Dixon's Chevrolet and relented. Up to a point. IndyCar let Honda make more than the allowable annual changes to its road-course and short oval kits, but turned down Honda's request to make major changes to its superspeedway kits.

May I remind you what happened in Phoenix. Chevrolet qualified the top 10 drivers, led all 250 laps and had eight of the top nine finishes.

The Indy 500 is run on a superspeedway, meaning it's even longer, faster than Phoenix. An edge on a short oval like Phoenix will be magnified at enormous IMS.

The Indy 500 is around the corner. Wonder which Honda drivers will have to be sensational just to finish fifth and sixth this year?

This traces to December 2013, when IndyCar announced the great idea – and it was, on the surface – to introduce new kits, made separately by Honda and Chevrolet, to encourage more speed and brand development. This is what IndyCar president Derrick Walker said in December 2013: "Aero kits will improve the diversity of the fan experience."

Derrick Walker isn't the IndyCar president anymore. He announced his resignation late last season. Coincidence? Don't know. But he's gone, and the competitive imbalance remains.

Dixon, the 2015 champion from Chevrolet, predicted this offseason that Honda and Chevrolet would "morph a little bit into similarity" this year.

"Already from some of the Honda stuff we have seen, it looks very similar to a Chevy already," Dixon told USA Today in February.

Only thing that looks similar to last season is the race results – though in fairness, the gap doesn't look exactly the same.

It looks bigger.

The 100th Indy 500 is approaching. We don't know which driver will win.

But at the moment, we know which drivers won't. Gregg Doyel/Indy Star