ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – After 199 races, and with perhaps as few as eight left in the life of IndyCar’s 2.2-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 engine package before the introduction of the hybrid system, Chevrolet’s racing arm was still thrashing away this offseason to try and find any tiny advantage that might be left.

“Because when you gain little bits and pieces here and there, they’re usually pretty substantial,” Pato O’Ward said Sunday.

Substantial they were.

After a season where Honda Racing Corp. USA, its IndyCar manufacturer competitor, nearly doubled up Chevy in wins (11 vs. 6), more than did so on poles (12 vs. 5) and swept the street course slate, Chevy drivers were pleased at the competitive advancements the bowtie brand rolled out for Sunday’s season-opener on the streets of St. Petersburg. Chevy cars – paced by polesitter Josef Newgarden – swept the top-4 between the Team Penske trio of Newgarden (1^st), Scott McLaughlin (3^rd) and Will Power (4^th) and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward (2^nd).

Only twice a year ago did either manufacturer sweep the top-4 spots in a race. Both times – street races at Long Beach and Toronto – were Honda-dominated.

“They went to work over the offseason, and we’ve got to appreciate that," McLaughlin told reporters post-race Sunday. "They’ve come back with a full range of things that have helped us today.”

How he did it: After starting on pole, Newgarden dominates IndyCar season-opener at St. Pete

As many expected coming in, Sunday’s race, comfortably won by Newgarden with a 7.9-second cushion, was a fuel-saving affair. The combination of a lighter car – aided by new, lighter parts that were expected to offset some of the weight of the new hybrid system that was expected to debut Sunday when Firestone began manufacturing its tires – and more durable tires, made with the expectation they’d need to carry the hybrid’s weight, made the two-stop strategy the obvious choice.

Typically, one wouldn’t expect a race decided by fuel saving to be such a thorough beatdown by one driver, let along one manufacturer. But as O’Ward explained, Chevy officials’ level of meticulousness during the six-month offseason – including flying to the U.K. to take meetings with McLaren Racing personnel in-person and similar meetings with Team Penske in North Carolina – took the manufacturer’s search for what was left to be extracted to the next level.

“You ask for the menu, and you don’t typically get the whole menu, but they gave us the whole menu,” Newgarden said.

Moving forward: IndyCar adopting subcommittees to tackle future direction with growth, charters

Next comes two days’ of testing at The Thermal Club in two weeks before closing with the $1 Million Challenge, a non-points event that features multiple heat races and a 12-driver main event. It’s unclear how much confidence teams, drivers and the dueling manufactures will take from performances (or a lack of them) where the series has visited only once before.

But after that? The series visits the streets of Long Beach, where Andretti Global has won four of the last five races, and Honda-powered cars have won five of the last six. Newgarden’s win in the 2021 season-finale the exception. How Team Penske, Arrow McLaren and the rest of the Chevy program contend there will be a great barometer of just how big those gains we saw hints of Saturday and Sunday may have been.

For one, Team Penske president Tim Cindric told IndyStar he has faith it could resemble 2022, when Chevy cars grabbed 13 of 17 poles and 11 of the 17 race wins.

“It’s just nice to feel the gain and see the gain, but things can change, in terms of just performance and where we put everything. Some tracks work for Honda, and some tracks work for Chevy, and Long Beach was probably one last year where Honda was quite strong,” McLaughlin said. “But if we see a gain there, that’s going to bode well for the rest of the year.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Chevy IndyCar drivers wowed at offseason gains at St. Pete