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Motorsports

Expecting possible pitfalls on road to IRL title defense

Infusion of stronger teams won't make Sam Hornish Jr.'s 3rd championship quest easy.

By BRUCE LOWITT, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 1, 2003

One is tough. Two are tougher. Three?

"I can't think of anybody right off the top of my head that has won three major championships in a row," said Sam Hornish Jr., heading into Sunday's Toyota Indy 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway that he won in 2001-02. It is the start of the IndyCar series he has won the past two years. "It's good to be able to come back as a defending champion and especially as a two-time champion."

What Hornish hopes, he said, is he repeats as the Homestead-Miami champion and still is in the hunt for a third championship with a few races remaining. Those would be the Delphi Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway, Toyota Indy 400 at California Speedway and the season-ending Chevy 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, three of the five he won in last year's 15-race series. There are 16 this year; the Indy Racing League added the Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Motegi.

"We don't have to win every race," Hornish said. "Last year we averaged a sixth-place finish. This year I think if anybody can average a sixth place they have an awesome shot for the championship.

"Miami has been a very good track to us, and the first race and the last race of the season both years have been very good for us. If we go out there and do the same things that we have done over the past two years, and if we're consistent and try to make sure that we finish the laps, and if we have a car that is capable of winning, we're going to be okay."

That's one big if after another, particularly the last one. Toyota and Honda, former Championship Auto Racing Team engine builders, jumped to the IRL, giving Chevrolet (which Hornish drives) its biggest challenge in years. And the IRL adopted new chassis and engine specifications.

"We've been kind of put behind the 8-ball," Hornish said, "because Toyota and Honda weren't afraid to go ahead with (IRL chassis) projects in the middle of the (CART) season last year while Chevrolet was still focusing on winning the championship with the IRL."

Then there's competition in the cockpit. Not long ago the IRL filled its field with a lot of, well, fill-ins, cars and drivers with little chance of competing for checkered flags, much less winning one.

But as the IRL has grown it has had an infusion of strong teams, some deserting CART, the older of the two series. CART once was the only major open-wheel series in the United States. Then Indianapolis 500 owner Tony George created the IRL in 1994 as a lower-cost option.

Michael Andretti led a partnership that bought Team Green from Barry Green in December, moved it from CART to the IRL and renamed it Andretti Green Racing. He will be one of its drivers, Tony Kanaan and Dario Franchitti the others, when he races in his 12th and final Indianapolis 500. After Indy, Andretti said he will be strictly an owner.

Roger Penske, one of racing's all-time winning owners, abandoned CART after 2001. Mo Nunn's and Ganassi's teams expanded their IRL operations and left CART, and Adrian Fernandez Racing is fielding an IRL car. Even Bobby Rahal, who won 24 CART races and three series titles from 1982-98 and served as interim CEO of CART, is in the IRL with Kenny Brack as his driver.

Two-time Indy 500 winners Al Unser Jr. and Helio Castroneves left CART, with Gil de Ferran, Penske's two-time (2000-01) CART champ.

Hornish said with new engines and chassis, he is unsure what he is up against, but acknowledged Panther Racing's one-car team struggled to keep up with the opposition in preseason testing. With his team's IRL success the past two years, he said, "I guess we spoiled ourselves a little bit. I think instead of maybe three or four (teams) battling it out for (the championship), at the end you are going to see six or seven."

Hornish said the increased competition is good because it means the IRL is growing. And his long-term goal remains what it was before he strapped himself into an IndyCar the first time three years ago: to win the Indy 500. "That is what I started racing for," Hornish said, "to be able to have an opportunity to win that race. And I think I'm going to stay here, for sure, until that it gets done."

But for now he is viewed as a possible underdog, in part because of recent testing. He does not mind.

"It's always better to be the underdog than the guy that everybody is expecting everything from," Hornish said. "But it's going to be a long, tough season. Everybody has something to show you in the practice. ... When you know the people that are putting everything into (their car), putting what they can into it, then you can start worrying. If we go out (at Homestead-Miami) and end up three laps down, then maybe I'm worried."

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