To be honest Dave I don't think Hornish will make the grade in NASCAR. Just my personal view here, but the impression he gives me is that something essential is missing in his makeup. It's as if he lacks grit, or a will to push through difficult circumstances and force a car to the front. Normally I would have said "haha, no way, he is an Indy 500 winner, he'll do ok" but he just isn't. He has had much more running than any of the other drivers to make the swap, has more oval experience than most of them, and has much better equipment than
any of them, yet can't seem to get the job done.
Even Franchitti, Speed and Villeneuve, who have only ran 1 race (well 2 now for JV since the truck race tonight) have looked far more impressive than him. It's just strange, but reminds me of his IROC races when he struggled. He seems just not be able to drive the big heavy stock cars like he can with the Indy Cars.
Neil, if you look at the qualifying times then it shows there would be even more Toyotas in the race, but the qualifying system didn't allow it. AJ Allmendinger was the next car to be in the race, but he was just slightly too slow compared to the under-35ers, despite running a time good enough for a top 10. Boris in a Roush car DNQed too! It's clear that the cars that had to qualify on time were running dedicated qualifying setups and not race setups like the other cars, but thats still a massive leap in times for the Toyotas.
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