Hornish Jr., RPM still have questions to answer

Hornish, 35, obviously believes that’s the case. Although he hasn’t competed in a full-time capacity in the Sprint Cup Series since 2010, when he finished 29th in points with Team Penske, Hornish hasn’t exactly been sitting at home on the couch.

He finished out the year for Penske in 2012, running 20 races in the No. 22 entry after AJ Allmendinger was suspended. That same year, he finished fourth in the NASCAR Nationwide Series standings.

The following season, he finished second in the Nationwide Series, falling just three points short of the title won by Austin Dillon.

He’s made nine NASCAR starts this season, eight for Joe Gibbs Racing in Nationwide, winning at Iowa in the team’s No. 54 Toyota.

His lone Sprint Cup start came at Auto Club Speedway, a last-minute call putting him in the No. 11 of Denny Hamlin after Hamlin was sidelined for medical reasons.

Age isn’t an issue — six of this year’s 13 race winners are 35 or older, and they have combined for 15 wins in 30 races.

Experience shouldn’t be a problem, although rule changes, the lack of testing opportunities and getting settled in with a new team will affect how quickly the team is able to get up to speed.

Why return to the series in a full-time capacity? Hornish said he’s yet to complete what he originally hoped to accomplish when he made the transition from IndyCar, where he won championships in 2001, 2002 and 2006.

“A lot of people want to ask me ‘why don’t you go back to IndyCar?’ ” Hornish said Wednesday. “I never came over here because I wanted to have a little bit more fame or I felt like I was going to make any more money doing it. I came over here because I was intrigued by the competition side of it.

“I felt like I had accomplished what I wanted to in the IndyCar Series. Now I put myself back in position where I could continue to build on what I originally came over here for.”

And RPM, he said, can help him accomplish that.

It won’t be easy. While the organization clearly has made gains in the past few seasons, its drivers have won only sporadically. Almirola’s victory this season, in July at Daytona, earned the driver a spot in this year’s Chase, but both he and Marcos Ambrose struggled to find the consistency necessary to be a factor on a weekly basis.

It’s been a year of slow improvement for the group. Although Almirola failed to advance out of the first round of the Chase, he earned his first career win, and his two top-five and seven top-10 finishes are career bests.

Ambrose, who will return to Australia after the 2014 season, failed to earn the victory that could have put his No. 9 team in the Chase. His three top-five and five top-10 finishes through 30 races this year are on par with previous years’ results.

While he says the organization is “not where we want to be yet,” Sammy Johns, director of competition for RPM, said the gains the group has made this year helped attract a driver with the potential and talent of Hornish.

RPM could have gone the other way with its choice, opting for a young driver with less experience. But by choosing Hornish, the team clearly expects to continue to move forward without taking a step back.

Both driver and team have something to prove.

“It’s kind of like a small ship,” Hornish said of the organization. “It’s a lot easier to turn, and they’ve got a lot of things heading in a really good direction.”

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