Stater Bros. 300 - Rookie Friday Quotes

Raybestos Rookie Happy Hour speeds:
Hornish Jr. 11th
Ambrose 13th
Ragan 14th
Peters 29th
Krisiloff 35th
Montoya 36th
Keselowski 38th

Sam Hornish Jr. was the top Raybestos Rookie in both Busch Series practice sessions today at California Speedway. Hornish Jr. was 11th after the final practice session and will be making his fourth Busch Series start in Saturday’s race.

SAM HORNISH JR., No. 12 MOBIL 1 DODGE: “Everything was going pretty good. We came here with a setup similar to what we ran when we were at Las Vegas and felt pretty comfortable there. It really translated well for us here. For me to not ever be here in a stock car it was nice to have a feeling of some kind of comfort as we went out there. We just tried to make small changes and continue to move forward. Had a little bit more in the car and I got a little bit excited with the throttle and gave that away. Just looking forward to getting more laps and hopefully having a good run tomorrow.”

HOW BIG OF AN ADJUSTMENT HAS THIS BEEN? “I think the biggest thing is I know when in an IndyCar exactly what I want out of the car in order for it to be fast. I know that there is a certain amount of, with the handling characteristics are, what the car needs to feel like at the beginning versus where I want it to be at the end. This is just kind of guessing game for me right now as far as finding where the car needs to be, what’s going to be the best when it gets down to it. It’s a big learning curve but I don’t feel like I’m going to get it all in a couple of races. It’s going to take some time and we may get lucky and hit it here or there before that but until I know exactly what I want out of the car and what it needs to feel like in practice so that it’s good in the race it might take a little while.”

IS THE MAIN GOAL TO QUALIFY? “That’s one of the things that’s been tough about this is a lot of time we focus so much on qualifying that we don’t have time to focus on the race stuff because we need to qualify for the points. The big goal now is to continue moving forward and to get ourselves to a point where we go into each race and don’t have to worry about qualifying. We’re guaranteed to be in. I feel like the more I learn about the cars that’ll all take care of itself. The qualifying won’t be such a big deal and I’ll also be better in the races.”

HAS IT BEEN DIFFICULT TO KEEP YOUR CONFIDENCE UP WHILE YOU LEARN IN THE BUSCH SERIES? “I think if I was kind of going at it alone it would be tough. If it was something that if I had given up my IndyCar to come over and try this out or I didn’t have a ride over there, there would be a lot more pressure on it because you have to make it work. Right now, while I want to do good, it’s still a situation where it’s kind of an extra-curricular activity. If it doesn’t at all work out, hopefully we go forward with the IndyCar program. But I really want it to work and I want everybody to feel like at the end of the day that it was a successful venture to do this. I also have another person to measure myself against with Montoya being over here. If he was going out winning every race I would probably be feeling pretty bad about myself. He’s been doing a little bit better than me so far and I think he’s definitely got some more experience with running both series and also the amount of testing time and that’s kind of the only thing on his plate is to run the stock car. I feel like we’re doing okay. I want to do better, though.”

HAVE YOU AND MONTOYA TALKED ABOUT THE TRANSITION TO STOCK CAR RACING? “It’s more light stuff. If we do talk it’s more like ‘Hey, what’s going on.’ That’s probably more based on my nature than his. I’m kind of a quiet guy, keep to myself and just go about my own thing, mostly because I don’t want to take up other people’s time. I know how limited it can be [smiles]. It’s pretty neat to have someone to measure yourself against. There’s a lot of guys that don’t get that opportunity to have somebody that’s been in similar situations in the past and you get thrown into this thing that’s totally different. You’re sinking or swimming and you don’t know whether you’re doing okay or not.”

IS THE PLAN TO RUN THE FULL INDY RACING LEAGUE SCHEDULE AND A LIMITED BUSCH SERIES EFFORT? “It’s not every weekend that I’m not running IRL cars but it’s quite a few of them. It’s a pretty big schedule, in my opinion. It’ll be close to 35 weekends a year this year so it’ll be interesting. We’re still 100 percent focused on IndyCar when we’re there doing that and we come here and we’re focused on this. It’s actually a little bit relieving to have a little bit of a new challenge and being able to kind of clear your mind out and try something new.”