On rare occasion, Hornish not fast enough in racecar (cont'd)

"So for me, the way I look at it, I know you have to kind of be over here to do that. To have an opportunity, you need to be in these cars a lot. You need to have the practice and all the test time with the guys, to have them trust you when they're around you -- and not want to punt you out of the way when you're around 'em, too."

To be fair, Hornish said that Friday marked only the third day he had ever been in a COT. And although he has run in eight Busch events this season, he's had virtually no practice time in those cars, either. Friday also marked the first time he had ever been to the New Hampshire track -- all of which led McCauley to preach caution about Hornish committing to a full-time Cup schedule next year even before Hornish went out for his ill-fated Friday qualifying attempt.

"We'll see. Let's get through the fall. We're going to run in five to seven races this fall and see how things go, see how Sam does. And see how the team does," McCauley said. "I don't want to say we're going to go out and conquer the world. Right now we've just got to conquer getting qualified. ... One thing at a time. I don't like getting ahead of myself."

Try as he might, Hornish could not get ahead of the rest of the field -- or even close to the middle of it -- on his Friday qualifying run.

"As far as qualifying goes, I wouldn't say I'm always the best qualifier but I'm usually in the top half," Hornish said.

Then he paused, straining again to try and recall if there ever was a time when he didn't make a race that he set his sights on.

"I'd say it was probably since I was running go-karts a long, long time ago," Hornish said. "The last time I can remember was '93. There were about 150 karts in an event, and I was last-place car that didn't qualifying into the final that took 22 cars.

"I was 23rd then, so it was a lot better than what I did [Friday]. I didn't have to worry about those things in Indy car. Even going to Indy the first time, I knew where I needed to be, I knew more about the car, had more time in the car, had been at the track. It wasn't like an hour-and-half [practice] session and then try to do it. But that's part of the deal. I think hearing everyone saying you can't overdrive the car, you can't overdrive the car, actually ended up hurting me.

"I didn't overdrive it. I didn't drive it hard enough."