INDIANAPOLIS -- As a 12-year-old racing go-karts in the Midwest, Sam Hornish Jr. had a dream that would foretell his future as a race car driver.

"I had a dream one night about Roger [Penske] and Rick Mears," Hornish laughed. "I was washing trucks for my mom and dad after school at the time. They came while I was at work and wanted me to come race for them."

When he woke up, the driver from Defiance, Ohio, said he thought, "Yeah right, like that was ever going to happen. And then 10 years later I was sitting there having a meeting with Roger talking about going racing for him. It's pretty neat how things change sometimes."

And change they have for the three-time IndyCar Series champion and Indianapolis 500 winner, who is now a second-year driver in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series preparing to make his second start in a stock car at the famous Brickyard.

Walking through the garage area of the Indianapolis track as an Indy 500 winner, Hornish appeared larger than life to the open-wheel fans and Indy loyalist.

In the Cup garage, however, he's just another driver trying to prove himself.

"There's a lot for me to continue to learn," Hornish explained on Friday. "That's why I wanted to do this whole thing. I had an opportunity to come to a team that would support me, even if things didn't go as well as we wanted them to the first year. I knew it was going to be difficult but that is why I wanted to do it."

Patience with Hornish has paid off this season. He is the second most-improved driver behind teammate Kurt Busch in terms of Driver Rating. This season, Hornish has an average running position of 22.5. He has run 24 percent of his laps inside the top 15. And it's all resulted in four top-10 finishes so far this season.

"The team continues to grow, and as we do I feel like we have better and better chances to win," Hornish said. "I feel like I have a great opportunity to go out there and run well this weekend."

Hornish and Indy 500 winner Juan Montoya are the only drivers who could win both the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard and the Indy 500.

"That's part of the reason that I decided to come over here and do this," Hornish said. "My main goal was to come over and run the Daytona 500. I wanted to run the Brickyard 400. Now that I've run three of the biggest sporting events in the world as far as racing is concerned, I want to try and take care of winning three of them."

Near the top of the speed chart on Friday and excelling on the circuit's flat tracks such as Indianapolis, Pocono and New Hampshire, Hornish feels he will be in contention to win on Sunday.

"Before coming to Indy last year, we had been to Pocono and that was terrible for us. We had been to New Hampshire, that was terrible. But this season we have top-10s at both places. We put a lot of work into our flat-track program in the offseason, and hopefully that will transfer to Indianapolis."

To be a successful Cup driver, Hornish has learned to focus on what his feet are doing as much as his hands.

"It's about not upsetting the car too much with the brake or too much throttle," he said. "I feel like we've come a long way. We've actually run a lot better than where we are in points and some of the results have shown. I feel like this transition would have been a lot easier for me if I never drove anything front-engine until I got over here [to NASCAR].

"If I would have grown up running late models or sprint cars, I feel like the transition would have been a lot easier, but everything that I did was in preparation to be an IndyCar driver."

Still, he's starting to feel more relaxed and confident among the Cup competition despite critics who believe he'll retreat back to the open-wheel ranks -- as a handful of his counterparts have done -- if he doesn't find substantial success soon in NASCAR.

"I'm waiting for the 'when are you going back to IndyCar' questions to end," Hornish said. "I know that the better we do over here, the less of those questions that I get. I came to do this to finish out my career -- being a stock-car driver. For some people it's hard to believe that, but the better that we do the less people ask me those questions."

In the meantime, he's enjoying the more at-ease atmosphere the stock cars bring to Indianapolis as opposed to the month-long pageantry involved with the Indy 500.

"I got to get the sickness out of me that I had when I was running IndyCars," he said. "I'd be here for three weeks and my stomach would turn and everything, but being here only three days doesn't allow you to get that emotion and everything built up so I enjoy that."