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IndyCar
INDYCAR: GM’s Kent Discusses Chevy’s Engine Change Decision
"We wanted to preserve the show, and decided it was in the best interest of all our Chevy teams, and the Long Beach Grand Prix," Kent told SPEED.com.
GM's Mark Kent. (Photo: LAT)
With two wins from two races this year, Chevrolet’s return to open-wheel competition had been going according to plan. Those plans hit a snag on Monday when James Hinchcliffe’s Chevy-powered Andretti Autosport entry suffered an emphatic bottom-end failure, which caused Ilmor, builders of the 2.2-liter, twin-turbo V6 engines, to park its teams as it combed through the data to find the reason behind the breakage.
Although the exact cause of the failure has been kept private, enough was learned to prompt GM to make sweeping updates to all 11 of its cars. With 11 engine changes made and 11 10-spot grid penalties earned, GM Racing Director Mark Kent told SPEED.com on Friday that playing it safe--willingly incurring those penalties--was in the best interest of the series and this weekend’s event.
“I think it was a fairly easy decision to come to, based on the facts that we gathered,” he said. “As difficult as it was to have to do this, it’s much better than starting a race and having something happen. Based on what we know, we’re not certain something would happen, but if it did, it would be a lot worse to say we knew something and didn’t do anything about it. So we wanted to preserve the show, and decided it was in the best interest of all our Chevy teams, and the Long Beach Grand Prix to swap the engines out beforehand.”
We had a good chuckle during the interview as Kent described how Chris Berube, his new IndyCar program manager who’s been on the job less than a month, was thrown to the wolves after being tasked with informing the Chevy teams about the 10-spot penalties they would receive.
“Chris actually met with the team principals yesterday and all their feedback was positive,” Kent continued. “They understood this was the right thing to do. I think this probably has been done in the past, but it wasn’t as visible in the past. But now with the new rules; we fully support the new rules, it’s much more obvious when you see the cars going backwards on the grid.”
Asked if he’d support changes to the 10-spot penalty rule, Kent vowed to support whatever decision the series makes.
Although the exact cause of the failure has been kept private, enough was learned to prompt GM to make sweeping updates to all 11 of its cars. With 11 engine changes made and 11 10-spot grid penalties earned, GM Racing Director Mark Kent told SPEED.com on Friday that playing it safe--willingly incurring those penalties--was in the best interest of the series and this weekend’s event.
“I think it was a fairly easy decision to come to, based on the facts that we gathered,” he said. “As difficult as it was to have to do this, it’s much better than starting a race and having something happen. Based on what we know, we’re not certain something would happen, but if it did, it would be a lot worse to say we knew something and didn’t do anything about it. So we wanted to preserve the show, and decided it was in the best interest of all our Chevy teams, and the Long Beach Grand Prix to swap the engines out beforehand.”
We had a good chuckle during the interview as Kent described how Chris Berube, his new IndyCar program manager who’s been on the job less than a month, was thrown to the wolves after being tasked with informing the Chevy teams about the 10-spot penalties they would receive.
“Chris actually met with the team principals yesterday and all their feedback was positive,” Kent continued. “They understood this was the right thing to do. I think this probably has been done in the past, but it wasn’t as visible in the past. But now with the new rules; we fully support the new rules, it’s much more obvious when you see the cars going backwards on the grid.”
Asked if he’d support changes to the 10-spot penalty rule, Kent vowed to support whatever decision the series makes.
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