Sam Hornish Jr. thought about dropping in on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month, to visit with all the his former teammates preparing for open-wheel racing's biggest event. Then the IndyCar champion turned stock-car driver realized what a stir he would cause, and decided against it.

“

The steady progress that he's made is definitely something that we were looking forward to. I think that his crew chief, Travis Geisler, is settling in with Sam and finding that groove.

”

-- KURT BUSCH

"I finally got everybody to stop asking me when I was going to go back to IndyCars, so I figured it probably wouldn't be smart," Hornish said, laughing. "It's going to bring all that stuff back up again. So as much as I'd like to go and see all the guys, most of my friends there work on the Penske team or work for one of the IndyCar teams I drove for. In reality, as much as it would be fun to go talk to some of those guys, I can go see them at the shop."

And besides, this month Hornish has more pressing plans -- like trying to build on what's shaping up as the most promising stint of his short NASCAR career. He's still a distant 31st in driver points, still capable of nights like the one he suffered through two weeks ago at Darlington, where he spun out again and again and again. But top-10 finishes at Phoenix and Richmond, practice and qualifying runs where his No. 77 Dodge clocks in closer to the front of the field than the back, and a growing sense of confidence leave the 2006 Indianapolis 500 winner with no doubts that he made the right career choice.

"I've been telling people all year that we've got top-10s around the corner, we've got top-fives around the corner," he said. "But until you start getting out there and doing it, nobody believes you."

They believed after the April 18 race at Phoenix, where Hornish came up from a 35th-place starting position to finish ninth, at the time the best result of his two-year Sprint Cup career. Two weeks later at Richmond, he bettered that with a sixth-place finish. Add in top-five qualifying efforts at Talladega and Darlington, solid practice runs at places like Daytona, California, and Las Vegas, and it's no wonder the Penske camp believes the 29-year-old Ohio native is about to turn the corner.

"The steady progress that he's made is definitely something that we were looking forward to," said teammate Kurt Busch, currently third in points. "I think that his crew chief, Travis Geisler, is settling in with Sam and finding that groove. It's tough when you go to all these race tracks for the first time. It just seems that you can't ever get caught up. You come back for the second year, you're seeing these race tracks for a third time, it's easy to digest, it's easier to figure out the next step that you have to make, and we're starting to see some good results."

“

I've been telling people all year that we've got top-10s around the corner, we've got top-fives around the corner. But until you start getting out there and doing it, nobody believes you.

”

-- SAM HORNISH JR.

It's been a challenging transition for Hornish, who won three championships and 19 races on the IndyCar tour before jumping to NASCAR in late 2007. This year he's been helped by markedly better Penske cars and Dodge engines, and a more cohesive pit crew that began its existence as a ragtag bunch pulled together from other teams. Last year there were too many situations like the second race at Richmond, where Hornish said he was so far down the speed chart during practice, they could have magically bolted another 100 horsepower onto the car and still not been fast enough. Now there are occasions when Busch's team benefits from Hornish's setup, a true sign of behind-the-numbers growth.

"Everybody asks me, do you like stock cars as much as you liked IndyCars? As soon as we start winning, I'm going to like it a lot more," he said. "But the gratification is going from a place where we were at last year to where we're at this year. I feel like it would have been a lot easier for me had I jumped in the No. 2 or the No. 12. We wouldn't have had all these struggles as a team, and it wouldn't have been as gratifying for me and for all the guys who work on the team if we didn't have to go through all those struggles. So yeah, they're tough when you go through them. But we're enjoying them now."

The progress comes in a top-15 practice lap, in having to make only small tweaks to the setup during a race weekend rather than wholesale changes, in knowing enough about stock cars now that Hornish is no longer asking the vehicle to do something it's not capable of. Now he has better cars that make it easier to learn. Now he's giving information to teammates Busch and David Stremme instead of asking for it all the time. He also has a degree of relative anonymity, a stark contrast to his days in open-wheel when he was public face of the series.

"I want to go out there and do well as soon as I possibly can, so I push for that," Hornish said. "But when I go back and look at it, I never was the guy who needed to have all the attention. I'd rather do my job, and if we have a good run and the people who are Sam Hornish fans like it, that's great. Then we go to the next race. I don't need to be the guy on every TV show. Obviously, [sponsor] Mobil would rather me be a little more outgoing and things like that. But I love driving the race car. That's my favorite part of all this. I just want to go out and drive the race car and win."

And there are no signs he's headed back to IndyCars, a notion he shot down at the end of last year. These days, he's too busy thinking about the results that got away, like an overheating problem at Daytona or a jack man falling at California or a loose wheel at Las Vegas or a crash at Talladega, unfortunate events that Hornish believes separates him from a top-15 standing in Sprint Cup driver points. Now he has a different Memorial Day weekend race to focus on, the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Mention Indianapolis, and he doesn't get wistful. After all, he'll see the place in July anyway.

"I made myself so nervous. I made myself sick at times during the month of May," he said, recalling the month-long grind of practice and qualifying sessions that precedes the Indy 500. "It's almost more relaxing to be here [in NASCAR], because you get to go to different places. It's not all about qualifying for the 500. To me, it's more fun to have three days at Indy instead of 27."