Hornish Jr.'s move into stock-car isn't easy one

FONTANA, Calif. -- Indianapolis 500 champion Sam Hornish Jr. loves a challenge. He's certainly found a worthy adversary as he tries his hand at stock-car racing in the Busch Series this season.

Tony Stewart proved you can have success in both disciplines. Hornish Jr., while not ready to forego his Indy Racing League roots, is hoping for similar fortunes.

"It's not every weekend that I'm not running IRL cars but it's quite a few of them," Hornish Jr. said. "It's a pretty big schedule, in my opinion. It'll be close to 35 weekends a year this year so it'll be interesting.

"We're still 100 percent focused on Indy-car when we're there doing that and we come here and we're focused on this. It's actually a little bit relieving to have a little bit of a new challenge and being able to kind of clear your mind out and try something new."

Almost from the time he made his debut in the Indy Racing League in 2000, Hornish Jr. has been one of open-wheel's top drivers. He posted 18 IRL wins in just 99 starts, including an incredible pass of Marco Andretti in the final few hundred yards to win the 2006 Indy 500 -- but the transition from a light, responsive Indy-car to the heavier stock cars has been more difficult than he expected.

After crashing at Phoenix and Homestead at the end of last season, Hornish Jr. wound up finishing 31st at Daytona. However, things have gone better at California, where he qualified 16th for Saturday night's Stater Bros. 300.

"I think the biggest thing is I know in an Indy-car exactly what I want out of the car in order for it to be fast," Hornish Jr. said. "I know what the handling characteristics are, what the car needs to feel like at the beginning versus where I want it to be at the end.

"This is just kind of a guessing game for me right now as far as finding where the car needs to be, what's going to be the best when it gets down to it."

That's part of the learning process, according to Hornish Jr.

"It's a big learning curve but I don't feel like I'm going to get it all in a couple of races," he said. "It's going to take some time and we may get lucky and hit it here or there before that, but until I know exactly what I want out of the car and what it needs to feel like in practice so that it's good in the race, it might take a little while."

In this instance, patience is a virtue. Team owner Roger Penske isn't putting any pressure on Hornish Jr. to produce. (Continued)