Sam Hornish Jr.'s Stock Finally Rising in Stock Car

Sam Hornish Jr. climbed out of his No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge Monday afternoon in Pocono, Pa., allowed himself to crack a smile and looked forward to receiving a call from his boss, Roger Penske.

Fourth place.

It wasn't exactly cause for celebration for Hornish, who owns three IndyCar championships and an Indianapolis 500 ring. But his hard-fought finish was a career best and gives him five top-10 Sprint Cup efforts.

It was progress.

"Well, yes it was [progress],'' Hornish allowed in a telephone interview with FanHouse this week. "But ultimately I want to win. We're getting closer and closer and I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.''

It's a good indication that Hornish the most-decorated, least-hyped of the recent open-wheel defectors is figuring this stock car business out. It's time to go and he knows it.

It's been a rough-and-tumble transition from the IndyCar Series to NASCAR's top Sprint Cup ranks for Hornish, who hasn't gone this long (nearly two full seasons) without a win since he moved from go-karts to Formula Fords as a teenager back in the late-1990s.

As accomplished but less-heralded than other marquee names to convert from open-wheel to NASCAR in the last few seasons, Hornish made the full-time move to NASCAR in 2008 -- the same time as Dario Franchitti and on the heels of Juan Pablo Montoya.

They are both flashy commodities and headline grabbers compared to Hornish, a quiet 30-year old from Bryan, Ohio.

Franchitti, a Scot whose Cup Series ride only lasted a half season, walks Hollywood red carpets with his wife, actress Ashley Judd. Montoya came to NASCAR just after returning from a respectful Formula One foray around the globe.

Hornish, the All-American "kid next door" likes to go bowling in his spare time and still lives near his parents in rural northwestern Ohio, where he is a local hero who has donated almost $2 million dollars to projects, including a senior center in honor of his late grandmother.

When it was time for Hornish to make the high-profile move to NASCAR, it didn't receive nearly the attention of the others despite having a resumé that stacks up to most of open-wheel's best. But Hornish doesn't care about those kind of things. His record speaks for itself.

He has three times the number of IndyCar titles as Tony Stewart and Franchitti and just as many Indy 500 wins (one) and Formula One world championships (zero) as Montoya.

Two years after Hornish left the IndyCar Series, Scott Dixon has just tied his all-time win mark of 19. Two years removed from competition, Hornish still has led more laps than anyone in that series' history.

This is a prodigy who earned two World Karting Association (WKA) national championships, including a 19-win season in 1994, when he finished in the top-five 43 times in 55 starts.

Since making the difficult technical transition to stock cars, Hornish has often been a punch line, his car a punching bag on-track. And people forget how accomplished a racer he is.

What he lacks in flair, he makes up for in substance. That's why the legendary Penske hired him in 2004. Two years later Hornish delivered a championship and Penske's 14th Indy 500 victory. And that's when the pair agreed to let Hornish eventually take the next logical but difficult step in his career -- NASCAR. What more did he have to accomplish in open-wheel?

Hornish made only a handful of Nationwide and ARCA Series starts in 2007 before a full-time Cup Series gig last year. With the testing ban this season, it's been harder to make up ground as driver or team. Few realize that his No. 77 team wasn't an intact operation simply moved up from the Nationwide Series or moved over from another driver.

"We started from the ground up,'' Hornish said. "It was like finding the right pieces of the puzzle wherever we could find them. We've changed some pieces since then and I feel like we have a great team, a lot of young guys, a lot of people learning right with me.''



That learning curve has been steep. Last year, he had only two top-20 finishes and failed to qualify for the season-ender at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

He's 27th in the points standings entering Sunday's race in Watkins Glen, N.Y., but has 10 finishes of 30th or worse to go along with his five top-10s. That inconsistency frustrates Hornish most. Each time he's had a top-10 finish, the next race he's finished 29th or worse -- often a victim of tough luck.

"This season there have been quite a few times I felt like he deserved a better finish and something happened out of his control, something would just go wrong,'' Penske Racing president Tim Cindric said. "This weekend was a case where opportunity finally came and he took advantage of it.

"You keep knocking on the door and eventually it's going to open. At the same time, a top-five is great but that should be the expectation not the exception and Sam won't be happy until that happens.''

Hornish's competitors are taking notice of his improved runs and he feels like he's slowly gained the respect needed for the side-by-side give-and-take or to be a drafting partner.

His boss is pleased, too. Penske told reporters earlier this year that he expected a top-25 finish in the points standings for Hornish.

"This is the year, he's got to make it,'' Penske said in April. "Sam's got a lot of pressure on him and 1 of 43 [drivers] is a lot different than 1 in 20. But we have all the confidence in the world in Sam.''

Fortunately for Hornish he also possesses something as necessary as his bosses' blessing and pure talent: great perspective.

"It takes time,'' Hornish said. "I knew it was going to be difficult, but I also knew I wasn't going to give up.''