NOT HAVING A GOOD TIME

A punishing 500 for Honda was underscored by losing three of its 17 drivers in the first corner, including 2022 Indy winner Marcus Ericsson, and the misfortune continued to build as the next out was Marcus Armstrong with a blown motor on lap six.

Katherine Legge’s Indy 500 was over on lap 22 as she became the second consecutive Honda-powered driver to suffer an engine failure. Rookie Linus Lundqvist was next to go after an optimistic attempt to hold the inside line into Turn 1 led to a solo crash on lap 27, which meant the first six cars to exit the race were from the Honda camp.

The strange streak extended to a seventh driver as Felix Rosenqvist — one of Honda’s strongest contenders — made it to lap 55 and coasted to a halt as his motor surrendered, leaving the same trail of smoke from the exhausts as seen with Armstrong and Legge.

Ryan Hunter-Reay’s crash on lap 107 capped things as he became the first Chevy driver to fall out of the race, but the misery wasn’t over as Honda’s Marco Andretti (lap 113) and Colton Herta (lap 170) brought the Honda DNFs to nine, or just over half of its cars.

Chevy’s tally was two with Will Power’s lap 145 crash added in.