Penske stands strong with Hornish as he starts over (cont'd)

Rough start

At least Hornish didn't spin and wreck the No. 77 Mobil 1 machine when he drove it out for display and photo opportunities in front of the Penske Museum, where he pulled his new ride right up next to one of his old ones -- the open-wheel car he drove to victory in the 2006 Indy 500.

To say stock cars have been a struggle for Hornish so far would be like saying Penske dabbles in used cars.

Day of Firsts

Sam Hornish Jr. will make his first Cup start at Phoenix International Raceway and will join Juan Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve as former Indy 500 winners in the field.

• Complete story, click here
• Cup transition a tough one

Three times in eight Busch Series starts this season Hornish has failed to finish a race because of an accident. He crashed after completing 132 of a scheduled 150-lap event at California Speedway in the second race of the season, and lasted only 16 laps before wrecking in the Circuit City 250 at Richmond.

At least Hornish has made some Busch races. He has struggled mightily just to get into Nextel Cup events.

In fact, when Hornish qualified 26th in his No. 06 Dodge for Sunday's Checker Auto Parts 500 Presented by Pennzoil at Phoenix, it was the first time in seven attempts that Hornish had run fast enough in Cup qualifying to make the show.

The plan had been for him to run seven Cup events during the Chase to the Nextel Cup to gain experience for next season -- or figure out if that was even what he wanted to do. But he failed in successive attempts to qualify for races at Loudon, Dover, Talladega, Charlotte, Martinsville and Atlanta before finally succeeding to make Sunday's event.

The failures to make races did not discourage him. In fact, they emboldened him. It made him more determined than ever to make this work.

"It wasn't until we missed the first couple of Cup races that I decided this is really what I want to do. I realize that somewhere down the road it could be the biggest mistake I ever made or the best thing I ever did," Hornish said. "I probably thought about it every minute of every waking day for the last year and a half."

He said he knows that not everyone understands why he is having such a difficult time making the transition.

"There are probably some people who see it from the outside and don't see the challenges that are there," Hornish says. "Not only do you have to get used to driving a different car, but you have 43 cars. You have double the amount of competition every time you go out on the racetrack. Everybody out that's over here is a champion in some regard and has won big races. It's as difficult as it is because of the people that are taking part in it.

"When you look at it, a two-time Daytona 500 champion [Michael Waltrip] went home this weekend without racing. So you can't say that it's an easy sport. It's difficult to make it into a race, let alone going out there and running in it for 312 laps."

Back to the future?

In some ways, what Hornish is going through now mirrors the early stages of his racing career. He began racing go-karts at age 11, years after many other serious racers take it up. And every time he felt like he was getting good at one level or another, his father would push him and challenge him to move on to the next one.

So it was after racing on a small dirt track near his hometown of Defiance, Ohio, that he ended up in Rockingham, N.C., competing in a national event on asphalt when he had never competed previously at that level or on that type of surface in a road-course event.

"We went from the smallest thing [in go-karts] to the highest thing -- and we did terrible," Hornish said.

But they kept working at it. Four years later, Hornish won 19 of 55 starts en route to the World Karting Association's U.S. Grand National Championship.

"The model coming up through go-karts was never to become a big fish in a small pond," Hornish said. "Once we got to IndyCars, it never felt that way. But this year, after running the races that I ran, I just felt like I needed that next challenge. I felt like I was becoming a little bit complacent in what I was doing."

Penske Racing teammate Kurt Busch has watched Hornish struggle since coming to stock cars, and says he is trying to help.

"I can't put my finger on one thing that it's been. It hasn't been a multitude of things," Busch said. "I'm maybe as puzzled as most everybody else is as to why we haven't seen success yet.

"I think he's going to be fine in the long run. He's got that passion, that desire. What the owners always say is that it's better to rein in a horse rather than having to pat him on his rear end to get him chugging along. Sam's chugging along just fine. So I think success is right around the corner."

Part of the problem, Busch adds, is that Hornish initially didn't even understand some of even the simplest of stock car terminology. (Continued)