Chevy gets its IndyCar reliability issues under control

Team Chevy weathered a brutal month of May as a pair of engine failures in the late April Indy Open Test were compounded by ongoing failures leading into and through the Indianapolis 500.

The close to the month on its home turf at the Chevrolet Grand Prix of Detroit offered no relief to the mounting problems as another wave of failures swept through its ranks on Friday and Saturday, when seven engine changes were completed prior to Sunday’s race held in the shadow of General Motors’s global headquarters.

“Chevrolet and our partners at Ilmor are working with several of our teams on engine changes recommended in response to a supplier quality issue,” the brand said in a statement on Saturday. “The situation has been identified and containment efforts are underway.”

Thankfully, the GM brand, along with its IndyCar engine building partners at Ilmor Engineering, got the problem under control as the field of Chevy’s twin-turbo V6-powered drivers appeared to experience no motor problems in the 100-lap race.

“We had a supplier issue with the valve(s) and the valve guide(s), and it's a coating issue, and so if you can imagine the valve sitting in the guide with the wrong coating over time, you get to see the valve chuck off the seat, and so it becomes fatigue,” GM President Mark Reuss said Sunday morning. "It doesn't happen on every engine, but we had a lot that didn't have the coating, so what we're doing is we're going in and changing those coatings and valves to make sure that we run as reliable as we have since 2012.”

Although the Chevrolet Grand Prix of Detroit was swept by rival Honda with a podium-filling performance led by Alex Palou, Kyle Kirkwood and Graham Rahal, reliability was restored for Chevy which had Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward in the No. 5 Chevy and teammate Christian Lundgaard in the No. 7 Chevy lead the brand to the finish line in fourth and fifth respectively.

Unrelated to IndyCar, GM swept Saturday’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship event at Detroit with the No. 31 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R taking the overall win in GTP and the No. 3 Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Z06 GT3.R seal the GTD Pro victory.