RACER's Marshall Pruett looks through the major topic or two to emerge from last weekend's Verizon IndyCar Series season opener and speeds through a series of smaller footnotes from the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

Honda boss Art St Cyr congratulates Bourdais.BAD MATH

The shock win by Sebastien Bourdais and Dale Coyne Racing confirmed everything a veteran IndyCar engineer said to prepare for when we spoke Friday morning. Although his team didn't win the race, he predicted the exact scenario that unfolded last weekend as IndyCar's new manufacturer math – and more specifically, the lack of depth in Chevy's reconfigured camp – played directly into Honda's hands.

In his estimation, the return of Chip Ganassi Racing to Honda would be the biggest influencer in how the 17-race championship plays out, but not in the traditional sense of wins and losses. The Bowtie's real numerical problem, he said, stemmed from losing an almost guaranteed 1-2 punch from CGR and Team Penske at every round.

Although CGR weathered a relatively disappointing 2016 season, it still managed to capture wins and poles with Scott Dixon, podiums with Tony Kanaan and, with Charlie Kimball factored in, the Ganassi squad could be counted on to help Chevy in its quest to pack the top six with its drivers.

Penske obviously dominated the championship last year with Simon Pagenaud and (St. Pete polesitter) Will Power leading its four-car assault, and on the days where missing speed or misfortune diminished Penske's impact, Chevy had four cars from CGR and single entries from Ed Carpenter Racing (with Josef Newgarden) and KV Racing (with Sebastien Bourdais) ready to steamroll Honda.

By subtracting the CGR program, Chevy lost its statistical advantage – and its safety net – whenever the Penske team is off its game or hit by adversity. As the race played out on Sunday, everything from an ill-timed caution period to electrical gremlins weakened Penske's chances of winning for Chevy, and with the rest of its teams unable to step up and serve as tail gunners, Honda left the street circuit with a nifty 1-3-4-5-7-9-10 finish.

Things won't always go as sideways for Chevy like they did at St. Pete, but the outcome did reveal the shortcomings in its overreliance on Team Penske. ECR will take some time to become a force outside of the ovals, and with so many changes to the A.J. Foyt team during the offseason, its drivers aren't expected to make a regular impact in 2017.

It means five Honda-powered entrants – Andretti Autosport, CGR, DCR, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports – have one Chevy team to topple on the road and street courses until the other Chevy programs are ready to go for wins and podiums. And those Honda teams have some serious horsepower to use, as St. Pete's trap speeds revealed.

Make no mistake: Even with the five-on-one dynamic, Chevy and Team Penske are still the clear favorites to win the most races and the Manufacturers' and Drivers' championships, but the likelihood of another 2016-style rout has certainly been called into question.

After fearing a continuation of the boring and formulaic season that saw Chevy take 14 of 16 wins, the new championship is full of thematic and mathematical possibilities.

BRAKE BALANCE

The big question after the race centered on the relative lack of brake temperature-related drama, and IndyCar's competition department deserves credit for turning a major concern into a manageable situation. Thanks to a second round of brake duct modifications granted by the series on Saturday, Honda teams were able to add new extensions to the lower rear brake ducts that were quite effective.

According to one engineer, the first round of cooling modifications from Thursday for the front and rear ducts, combined the Saturday update for the rears, helped reduce temperatures by approximately 75 degrees F, which "got us out of a panic and into [an] acceptable [situation]."

Elsewhere in the paddock, other engineers shared the same praise for IndyCar, but left St. Pete with concerns about future road and street course races. As many drivers were lifting early entering the braking zones to save fuel in the race, a faster pace and more aggressive braking could create problems that weren't triggered on Sunday.

"We had some headroom, but wouldn't ever target running and hotter; that was about the top of the comfortable window," said one engineer, and another described brake temperatures while running in traffic as "borderline."

IndyCar and its manufacturers don't have much time to come up with a third round of cooling options before the series heads west to Long Beach but if the collaborative effort at St. Pete can be used as a reference, smart fixes will continue to be approved when they are needed.

As one of the engineers remarked after Sunday's race, "I will say we made more improvements to the brakes in the last three days [at St. Pete] than in five previous years."

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