3 engine changes during Indianapolis 500 practice have sent Chevrolet and teams in search of answers

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Alexander Rossi's crew spent Wednesday night changing the engine in his car.

At least IndyCar's Ed Carpenter Racing had some experience making the switch. It made the same switch Tuesday night — on the team owner's car.

And with the turbocharged power boost coming Friday, qualifications set for Saturday and Sunday and the season's biggest race, a sold out Indianapolis 500, looming on May 24, it's enough to create angst for anyone — even someone with Rossi's expansive racing resume.

“I am concerned,” said Rossi, the 2016 Indy winner and a former Formula One driver. “It’s not only Ed, I mean, there’s been two others as well. So you’re going to have to ask like, we don’t have the full information as to, are they the same failures? Is it something that’s a batch thing?”

The engine manufacturer wants answers, too.

Three drivers — Rossi, Carpenter and Scott McLaughlin of Team Penske — have all made engine changes this week. A Chevy spokesman said each engine went back to Detroit for inspection.

It's a perplexing problem for a series that has significantly reduced the number of mechanical failures over the past few decades. In recent years, the caution periods for breakdowns that once seemed so commonplace have become a rarity.

But this week has caused some drivers to wonder whether that trend can continue through a second week on the Brickyard's 2.5-mile oval and the series' longest race.

Still, the Chevys have performed well. Two of the three fastest qualifiers on last year's 33-car starting grid, including pole winner Robert Shwartzman, were powered by Chevys. So were second- and third-place race day finishers David Malukas and Pato O'Ward.

O'Ward also posted the fastest lap in Thursday's practice at 227.308 mph, and Conor Daly still has the fastest lap of the first three practices at 228.080. Both also are Chevy drivers, and both feel good about their prospects heading into each of the next two weekends.

“I kind of hate to say it because I don’t really want to get too far ahead of myself, but this is the best car ever had here, for sure,” Daly said Thursday morning. “I can confidently say that right now, I can cut through traffic like I’ve never been able to before. But the conditions have been very nice.”

The ever-changing temperatures and wind gusts make the Brickyard one of the world's trickiest and most unique racecourses. But when uncertainty about a car's performance joins, it only creates more work for team and more worries for drivers.

There was good news for all three drivers in practice on a day many teams spent the bulk of practice either fine-tuning their qualifying setups or banking data that could help them race day.

Carpenter, a three-time Indy pole winner, had 10th fastest lap Thursday at 225.061. McLaughlin, the 2024 Indy pole winner, was 12th at 224.979. And after spending the end of Wednesday's practice watching his team work on the engine, Rossi returned to the track Thursday and was the busiest driver of all. He turned the most laps, 68, and posted the fifth-fastest lap at 226.364.

That should help Rossi relax a little bit heading into the weekend and race day.

“All that I know is Chevy is just as focused on making sure we can have a strong month, and we know that for the most part, we are the engine to beat,” he said. "So, hopefully, the bad luck’s out of the way.”

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FILE - Alexander Rossi attends a practice session for the IndyCar Indianapolis GP auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Aug. 11, 2023, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)

Six people who were found dead in a rail yard shipping container in Laredo, Texas, were from Honduras and Mexico and included a 14-year-old boy, all part of a human smuggling effort on a freight train, authorities said Thursday.

Police released more details about the discovery made Sunday in Laredo, near the U.S. border with Mexico, but said federal authorities were leading the investigation.

“They did not pass away in our city, but they were discovered here after hours of suffering,” Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said at a news conference. “We are demanding justice for these lives lost. It doesn’t matter where they came from."

The bodies were discovered by a Union Pacific employee. The Webb County medical examiner suspects the deaths were caused by hyperthermia, or heat stroke, a conclusion repeated by the mayor on Thursday.

The six people were put in the shipping container on Saturday in Del Rio, Texas, two days after the train departed from Long Beach, California, Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez Jr. said.

He said the train traveled to the San Antonio area from Del Rio before arriving Sunday in Laredo. Laredo is a busy land port for trade on the U.S.-Mexico border and a common nexus for the illegal movement of people.

“We did not know what we had at the beginning. We did not know that it was a human smuggling situation,” said Rodriguez, who declined to release further details about the route.

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said he believes a seventh person in the group also died. The body of a 49-year-old Mexican man was found Monday in the San Antonio area, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Laredo.

“He may have been either thrown from the train after being found deceased or fell from the train and (died) as a result,” Salazar told reporters earlier this week.

The sheriff also disclosed that San Antonio police took a call Saturday from a relative of someone in the shipping container who had been informed about the oppressive conditions. Salazar said police were dispatched but didn't find the container.

“This is my estimate: 120, 150 degrees inside these things,” he said of heat (topping 48 degrees Celsius).

Smuggling on trains has long been a concern partly because trains headed to the United States often slow or stop in Mexico before crossing the border. That creates an opportunity for smugglers or immigrants to climb aboard or hide drugs or other contraband on a train before it enters the U.S.

Two smugglers last year were sentenced to life in prison for what remains the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border. They were convicted in the deaths of 53 migrants found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022.

About 40 people were encountered daily in March crossing illegally by Border Patrol agents in Laredo, making it the third busiest sector among nine along the border with Mexico, according to the agency’s statistics.

In this image taken from video footage provided by KGNS, the Port Laredo Intermodal Terminal sign stands outside a rail yard in Laredo, Texas, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (KGNS via AP)

In this image taken from video footage provided by KGNS, Union Pacific train cars are stationed at a rail yard in Laredo, Texas, Sunday, May 10, 2026. (KGNS via AP)