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Indy Stars Move To Daytona

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By TONY FABRIZIO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 8, 2008

Updated: 02/08/2008 12:12 am

DAYTONA BEACH - He had realized his childhood dream of winning the Indianapolis 500, and he had won three championships and a record 19 races in the Indy Racing League.

Sam Hornish Jr. was far too young to retire, but he was losing interest.

And that, he says, is the major reason he left big-league open-wheel racing - where he was the biggest American-born star since Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr. came up in the 1980s - to start over in NASCAR.

"I feel that if I hadn't decided to do this, even being only 28 years old, I don't know how much longer I would have raced," Hornish said at a dinner during preseason testing. "So I needed a new challenge."

Hornish's switch is hardly an isolated case. The 2006 Indy 500 winner is part of the largest influx of prominent open-wheel drivers into NASCAR.

The rush started last year when Juan Pablo Montoya, the 2000 Indy 500 winner and a top-flight driver in Formula One, moved to NASCAR with Chip Ganassi Racing. Hornish is joined this year by 2007 Indy 500 winner and IRL champion Dario Franchitti, 1995 Indy 500 winner and 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve and former CART and IRL standout Patrick Carpentier.

There's also Scott Speed, who until last season was the only American driver in F1. He is racing in Saturday's ARCA 200, a support race for NASCAR's Bud Shootout, with hopes of moving up to NASCAR.

And more could be coming. St. Petersburg's Dan Wheldon, the 2005 Indy 500 winner and IRL champion, recently said this could be his final year in Indy racing. British F1 veteran David Coulthard, a 13-time race winner, and 2003 IRL champion Scott Dixon recently admitted they have at least thought about NASCAR.

It's almost as if somebody opened the floodgates, but four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears, who is still involved in Indy racing as a consultant to Penske Racing, said it would be wrong to characterize the recent trend as a "mad dash" from the IRL.

He points out that Franchitti was going to retire from open-wheel racing anyway and that Villeneuve, Carpentier and Speed didn't have good opportunities elsewhere. Carpentier admits that in 2006, he had bought a farm "and was digging holes."

Said Mears: "Everybody tries to lump it all into one deal - 'look at all the open wheel guys going over there' - but if you stop and look at each of them individually, there are different reasons for why they all do it."

Even so, it's hard to argue that the likelihood next week's Daytona 500 will have more former Indy 500 winners than this year's Indy 500 doesn't represent a shift. NASCAR has been getting the top young drivers for years. Now it's getting some of the established drivers are well.

"I think it opens everybody's eyes," Dixon said recently. "I think after Juan, it's made a lot of movement, or a bit of rustling, for a lot of people."

There's nothing new about open-wheel stars dropping in on NASCAR. In 1963, after USAC (then the sanctioning body for Indy-style racing) lifted a ban on its drivers racing at Daytona, A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones, Troy Ruttman, Rodger Ward and a young Johnny Rutherford entered the Daytona 500.

Andretti won the Daytona 500 in 1967, and Foyt won it in 1972. Unser, between his two Indy 500 victories, drove a Hendrick Motorsports Chevy in the 1993 Daytona 500.

All of those drivers remained in open-wheel racing. More recently, though, Tony Stewart moved to NASCAR after winning the 1997 IRL championship, and Casey Mears, Rick's nephew, switched after brief stints in CART and the IRL.

"I definitely think the opportunity over here is a lot greater," Casey Mears said.

Opportunity is one attraction open-wheel drivers have for NASCAR. Others include money - Franchitti tallied $4,017,583 last year as the highest earner in the IRL, while Montoya collected $5,390,445 for finishing 20th in NASCAR - and safety.

Most drivers consider NASCAR, with the dramatic improvements made since Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s death in 2001, far safer than open-wheel racing on high-speed ovals.

"For me, safety was big," said Carpentier, 36. "I stopped racing in Champ Car formerly CART because they went away from the ovals to mostly street courses. I went to the IRL and did it for one year. I thought it was way too risky. I wanted to do ovals - I used to be a speed skater when I was young - and that's what attracted me to NASCAR."

Hornish says his primary motivation for moving within Penske Racing to NASCAR was the challenge of becoming successful in what has become America's most competitive racing discipline.

"I think any race-car driver, if somebody could say anything about them other than that they were a champion, you would want them to say that you were versatile," Hornish said.

So far, Hornish hasn't proven his versatility. His best finish in 11 Busch/Nationwide Series races is 15th, and he failed to qualify for several Nextel/Sprint Cup races last fall until making the final two.

Roy McCauley, who was Hornish's Busch/Nationwide crew chief last year, recently said he is certain Hornish's talent will translate.

"It wouldn't surprise me to see Sam go through a growing year and then have a really blockbuster year," he said. "He's that focused. It's scary how focused he is."

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