Penske stands strong with Hornish as he starts over

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- To understand the way Roger Penske is accustomed to doing business, all that is required is a quick glance around the Penske Automotive Group's 42-acre complex on the outskirts of Phoenix.

To call it an automobile dealership would be to do it a great disservice, for it is so much more. It is multiple dealerships in one, none of them offering what average, middle-class Americans would call low-end automobiles. Over there are the Land Rovers, Volvos and Mini-Coopers, but they are little more than appetizers at a place that also features makes such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and a pre-owned gallery of stars that make the eyes water -- Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Maserati, Ferrari, Porsche, Rolls Royce and even a couple of Bentleys.

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In the market for an Aston Martin DB9 similar to the one Nextel Cup driver Denny Hamlin drives? You can find one here for a mere $154,788. There also is a used Lamborghini similar to the one favored by driver Tony Stewart, available for a mere $239,000. Of course you might prefer to step up to the pre-owned ("used" is such a pedestrian term) Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640 Convertible.

With 3,835 miles on it, it can be had for $409,750.

"We sell 1,000 cars a month out of here," Penske says proudly. He doesn't have to add that his sales associates don't need to sell many of these types of machines to make lots of money.

Then there is the Penske Museum that holds a prominent place in the Scottsdale complex and an even more favored position in owner Penske's own heart. The main floor is 8,000 square feet and on Saturday night featured all 14 of Penske's winning Indy 500 cars, plus a stock car that used to be piloted by Rusty Wallace and a 1958 Pontiac that was once driven by the Captain himself in a NASCAR event at Riverside, Calif. Upstairs is another 22,000 square feet of what is described as "indoor/outdoor function space, including two floors plus a mezzanine with a collapsible glass wall."

The museum is spotless and shiny all over. Each of the cars on display is maintained so that it still starts with the turn of a key or press of a button, depending on the era from which it hails -- another fact Penske is eager to disclose.

Penske, dressed smartly as always but casually in sports jacket and a white, open-collared shirt, is ever the gracious host. But on this night, he is not here to sell cars or pump up his beloved museum. He's here to sell Sam Hornish Jr., and perhaps pump him up as well.

Hornish is the three-time IndyCar champion and winner of the 2006 Indianapolis 500 who is one in a wave of open-wheel drivers making the crossover to NASCAR. This is his night. Although the fact that he is going to drive full-time in what next season will be called the Sprint Cup Series is no longer even a poorly-kept secret (it is, in fact, no secret at all), this is the night Penske has planned to make the announcement official and unveil Hornish's No. 77 Dodge that will be sponsored by Mobil 1, the Official Motor Oil of NASCAR.

Never mind that a few hours earlier, Hornish's struggles to make a successful transition to stock car racing hit another very public bump in the road. He ventured too low on the apron coming out of a turn during Saturday's Busch Series race at Phoenix International Raceway, spun up the track and crashed into another competitor, ending his latest effort to fit in after only 22 laps.

"I was spinning [Saturday] and in the middle of the smoke cloud, I wondered again if I made the right decision," Hornish says, laughing. "But we're going to keep working at it until we figure it out."

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.

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• 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.

"From the go-kart ranks to the open-wheel ranks, it's just a different school where you use different terminology," Busch says. "So I'm hoping to be able to draw analogies from open-wheel racing and translate it into stock-car lingo and help make it work for him.

"It's like being an American League designated hitter and having to go over to the National League and find a position you have to play. I think we painted the best picture we could for him about how difficult this would be. But it's tough to grasp that; it's tough to realize that. He's a three-time IRL champion and he's been a winner in everything he's jumped in. This is going to take a little bit of an extra effort and some extra nights where he won't sleep, but eventually he'll be fine."

In some ways, Hornish said it is like being 11 years old again and going to that asphalt track in Rockingham -- not knowing what the heck he is doing half the time, but remaining confident in his ability to eventually figure it out. But in other ways, he knows that it is very different this time.

"It's like that, except now instead of just being another local track champion you're the three-time IRL champion and former IndyCar Series champion and a whole lot of people expect a lot more out of you," Hornish said. "To be honest with you, all the go-karting I did is really a good basic place to start if you're going to go into Indy cars. The cars have so much grip and not a whole lot of horsepower, and so it's a lot about momentum in so many ways. It's not a lot about tire management. The engine is even in the back.

"So this is all totally different. It's like, 'Take everything you've learned in the last 15 years of your career and throw it all out the window -- because what worked in one car doesn't work in the other.'"

Hornish already has secured a hallowed position in the Penske Museum with his winning Indy 500 car. More time will be required to determine if he can accomplish something of similar scope in his new job.

If it happens, Roger Penske himself no doubt will welcome a few more stock cars into his museum that currently is dominated by open-wheel vehicles. In fact, it is obvious that Penske expects it. He's not into backing losing propositions.

"This is a tough series. There's no question about it," Penske says. "But we think Sam will be up to the challenge."