DETROIT, Mich — Honda is 2-for-2 on street course events during the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season. They’ve also taken 5 of the 6 podium spots and have now – won all three poles now too.

So, what happens in Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (3 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network) in a race that takes place quite literally, in Chevrolet’s backyard.

The race is on GMs front door step.

“Look, it’s an important race for Chevy,” said second place starter Scott McLaughlin. “World headquarters. I’ve always said it, I always put more pressure on myself than anyone could put on me. It’s not just Chevy, it’s Roger Penske. Home race. A lot of partners here this weekend. I’m sponsored by a very big company that has a massive presence here, Gallagher, with Detroit Tigers. It’s a big town for them.”

The Team Penske driver knows though that in order to win, you honestly have to get the top spot early. However, Alex Palou holds it. With rival teams who have won 5 of the 6 races this season lining up 1-2, just as they finished last week at Indy, how do you approach the start if you’re both?

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Palou hopes that the start of Sunday’s race is different than the one that he watched from the INDY NXT on Saturday afternoon for which the pole sitter was punted in the opening braking zone. He is hopeful McLaughlin doesn’t push too hard going into the single groove first corner.

“Yeah, I think it’s going to be hopefully smooth and calm. But it’s also a long straight, so they’re going to get a big tow from me,” said the pole sitter.

“I don’t know. He’s going to go aggressive, and he should. I don’t expect him or anybody to go slow on the first lap. Hopefully we can try and keep the first position, then try and be up front.

“We know we have a lot of speed. If we have clean air, we’ll be able to have a good race.”

McLaughlin though, admitted that he too is hopeful that it’s on the calmer side for he and those around him.

“Yeah, you don’t know. It is what it is. Same for everyone,” he says. “Hopefully just everyone, cool heads prevail, but you just never know.

“Yeah, we’ll go in with the same aggression, see how we come out. It’s not the track I’m worried about, it’s just the outside. Everyone on the outside line, it’s going to be interesting.”

Palou says that the difference though between the INDY NXT race and the NTT INDYCAR SERIES one is the fact that there’s more laps, actual pit stops and different tire compounds to decipher through.

“Yeah, I mean, I think it’s going to be a bit better for us just because we have two tire compounds,” said the Spaniard. “We have pit stops. We have more tire deg and a lot more laps. Hopefully our race is a bit more action on track. That’s it.

“We’ll have to see how the tires hold on or not. We saw something during practice, but as we keep on having traffic, we don’t have like continuous 10 laps. We’ll see tomorrow on the warmup if we can get some tire deg sense and see how the race going to be.”

The thing is, this race has the potential to look a lot like Nashville did and in both years that we’ve been going there, we’ve seen chaos.

9 cautions in both races.

“I think it’s going to race similar to Nashville,” said McLaughlin. “Everyone says we crash a lot in Nashville. I think it’s going to race very well. It’s just going to be up to us with the etiquette of the drivers to leave it up to us and figure it out along the way. Looking at it, there’s going to be a lot of passes, I think opportunities. Hopefully I only have to make one.”

He, like Palou, mentions tires too and the fact that they’re going to be just as key on Sunday.

“It’s going to be all that tire life, tire life is going to be key,” McLaughlin said. “One thing that’s good about this track, it’s a lot of stop-start corners. If you get better runs than others, use the push to pass, you can pass.”

You just can’t plan for cautions is the case. Without knowing tire life and when chaos could occur, it’s hard to know how to strategize this event.

“It’s going to be tough,” Palou said of strategy for Sunday’s 100 lap race. “But I think the idea is to try to stay up front instead find trying to do the best. The fastest strategy is to be up front. Maybe there’s a faster strategy to be 10 laps before, try to run fast.

“If you drop to 10th, there’s a caution, you stay there, you’re going to stay there. That happened to us the first year in Nashville. At the same time we don’t know what the tire deg is, so…

“It’s an unknown for everybody, but at least we start there, and we have a bit more margin to try and decide on time. But, yeah, it’s fun honestly. It’s fun because nobody knows. The engineers have to think about all the different outcomes and different strategies. We don’t know if there’s going to be 20 laps of yellow, or maybe there’s none like Detroit last year.

“Yeah, we’ll see what happens.”