Honda no longer holds an advantage over Chevrolet in the Indianapolis 500 according to Honda Performance Development president Art St. Cyr.
Last year saw six Honda-powered cars make it through to the 'Fast Nine', whereas this year the tables have turned and only two Honda's made it through with Sebastien Bourdais and Scott Dixon.
St. Cyr reckons Chevrolet has caught up, particularly in qualifying trim, but remains confident Honda has the race pace to challenge for victory.
"Obviously qualifying didn't quite go the way that we were expecting," he said. "The advantage that we've enjoyed over the last couple years is not there right now. Got to give credit to the other side on that one.
"We're still confident of our race pace. On Monday, we showed pretty well we were able to drive up on people, we were able to pass. We think that we're going to be okay on this.
"The teams that we have, like Andretti Autosport, that has won three of the last four Indy 500s, can never be counted out."
He admitted they need to better understand how it's happened and whether it's a case of the engine, chassis or both.
"They've [Chevrolet] come back strong with this one. Overall we were down. We need to get to the bottom of that from our side technically. How did that happen? How do we come back from that one?’
"We're already thinking about next year, how we're going to avoid that situation next year. That still involves understanding the chassis as well as the engine, how do make sure those two are matched up to go as fast as possible."
