“We’re going to have to stand back and see what INDYCAR decides to do,” he affirmed. “The background behind all these penalties was when they looked forward to this year several years ago, this ICONIC committee got together and one of the objectives was to lower the cost of participating. And one of the ways they did that was to reduce the cost of engine leases. One way to do that was to minimize the number of engines [needed per season]. That’s where the five-engine-per-lease rule came about. As INDYCAR developed their rules, the whole thing was to try and protect us from ourselves.

“The idea was: How can you put rules in place from changing rules every race, whether it was the team’s or the manufacturer’s choice. Did anybody envision a wholesale change (like Chevrolet’s choice to change all of its engines this weekend)? Probably not. Whatever they decide, we’ll support it. We’re learning together here, and at the end of the day, we want to put the best show on here.”

Kent closed our conversation by addressing an accusation that had been made regarding Chevy’s need to make engine changes en masse. Did the unexpected failure at Sonoma and the subsequent 11 engine swaps come from the manufacturer pushing its powerplants too hard? Is Chevy paying the price for being too aggressive too early in the season, while its rivals at Honda, who’ve only suffered one 10-spot penalty so far, have found better reliability by dialing things back ever so slightly?

“I think we would just attribute it to that we are still very early in the development of this engine,” he said in a direct manner. “It’s in every manufacturer’s interest to push as hard as they can. Whether it’s the electronics, the structure of the engine, how it’s installed in the car… If you want to be successful in motorsports, you have to be on the ragged edge and we’re working to find where that line is. We’d hope that every manufacturer is doing that same thing. If you want to get to the victory circle, you have to try your hardest.”

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. He also contributes to Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him @MarshallPruett on Twitter.