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Hornish returning to Indy as novice

July 25, 2008 12:15 am

BY JIM McCONNELL

Sam Hornish Jr. returns this weekend to the site of his greatest professional triumph, the 2006 Indianapolis 500.

Much has changed, however, since that May afternoon when he passed Marco Andretti on the final lap to win the world's most prestigious automobile race.

Most notably, Hornish no longer drives open-wheel cars. He left Roger Penske's IndyCar operation at the end of the 2007 season to pilot Penske's new No. 77 NASCAR Sprint Cup team.

As a NASCAR rookie, he's no longer one of the biggest fish in a relatively small pond. He rarely runs with the leaders and measures progress in learning a little bit more about stock cars every time he fires up his engine.

But while he acknowledged he's "a long shot" to become the first driver to win both the Indy 500 and Brickyard 400, Hornish insisted he has no regrets about his career choices.

"We knew it was going to be tough; that's why I wanted to do it," Hornish said during a teleconference earlier this week. "It was nice over in the IRL when you felt like you could win every day, but I just felt like I wasn't getting as challenged as much as I needed to anymore.

"This was going to be something that I wanted to do for the next 10 years and to keep me occupied and focused at what I was doing. Even with the frustrations and things that haven't been good, it's been good for us."

Interestingly, Hornish has been at his best this season in the biggest races. He finished a surprising 15th at the Daytona 500, then added a career-best 13th-place effort in the Coca-Cola 600.

In the other 17 events, he compiled more finishes of 35th or worse (seven) than 20th or better (two)leaving him 33rd in points as the Cup series makes its annual stop at the hallowed 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"I feel like we have been on a roller coaster--we have had a lot of lows though, kind of waiting for it to go back up," he said. "We have had some pretty tough days where no matter what we did we couldn't make the car any better, and that's frustrating. But I feel like that's when we are going to start getting better is when we can figure out how to turn it around on those kind of days.

"The big thing for us was learning as much as we could for 2009. When it comes down to it, we have done a lot of that, but we have had some issues. I have made my mistakes and we have made mistakes as a team and we are just going to continue to move forward."

Hornish is especially looking forward to an emotional NASCAR debut at the Brickyard, where the Ohio native regularly attended races as a child. He also takes encouragement from former open-wheel star Juan Pablo Montoya's second-place finish at Indy last July.

Still, his past experiences at the famed track were in nimble, highly engineered IndyCars--not comparatively clunky 3,400-pound stock cars.

"I guess I don't know what to expect. I didn't have an opportunity to go and test there, so there are a lot of unknowns for me," he added. "A little bit of it is just going to be getting acclimated for a couple of laps, kind of building it up to speed.

"The whole thing is getting your braking points down, getting down where you want to turn in at and how much you are trail braking into the corners. So throughout all of the [practice] sessions, I think I am still going to continue to learn. The track changes so much that there is going to be a lot going on. Indianapolis is all about your adaptability."

Jim McConnell: 540/374-5444
Email: jmcconnell@freelancestar.com